That's fine. If you get angry and you analyze it and dissipate, that's fine. But it seems to me you could use it more fully than that. by finding out a little bit about not so much how to dissipate it, but what it's about and where it comes from and who's angry. Because although you might be able to dissipate this anger, which is fine, and it's probably better to dissipate it than to have somebody with it, you didn't necessarily learn much from that, except maybe how to dissipate that one. And maybe you can dissipate some other ones, but some you might not be able to dissipate. And also, you know, it isn't going to be that much fun to keep dissipating anger for eternity. It gets boring after a while, and sometimes you're tired, and instead of dissipating the anger and analyzing, you just smash somebody for a little change of pace.

[01:09]

So dissipating anger by analytic means is a kind of, what do you call it, damage control. And damage control is okay. But how about enlightenment? How about freedom from the source of this anger? How about freedom from nasty, petty, stingy, mean, harmful, selfish activity? Rather than dispersing and dispersing and always putting out fires, which gets boring and you need breaks anyway. You can't do that 24 hours a day. Day after day, year after year, you get pooped, and then it's a little smash. So I'm talking about how do you study this in such a way that you won't just dissipate it for the moment, but you'll learn something. And gradually, you'll learn and [...] learn. And also, learning is not so boring.

[02:15]

Learning is kind of fun. And you don't need breaks from learning. As a matter of fact, that's what you're doing, right? Even when you're sleeping, you're trying to learn. You're not putting out fires when you're sleeping, though. That's the nice thing about sleeping. It's restful. You're not putting out fires. You can be angry in your sleep. You don't have to put it out. You can learn from your anger in your sleep, right? Because it's safe. So rather than just trying to dissipate the anger, why don't you try to find out what it's about? For example, is there some pain here? Did somebody hurt you? How did they hurt you? Who did they hurt? How come it was hurtful? What's there about you? But it might not dissipate the anger. Matter of fact, it might flare it up a little bit. I don't know. But in the process, you're starting to learn the source. The source is coming from something you're doing, the way you're negotiating with the pain. And something about the pain illuminates something about you.

[03:18]

If you study it that way, then it starts to become enlightening and setting you free from the conditions for the anger in the first place. And that's where the full self-expression comes up. It's not just anger, but it's your anger. You feel that anger. And what is it about your expression there? And that's why if in your own mind or in the presence of your teacher or your therapist, you can bring this anger and this self that feels it out in the open, You can learn about this self. And when you learn about the self, then you start to unravel the source of harmful anger. So, rather than hear some anger coming and trying to disperse it, let's rather, not aggravate it or make it bigger or anything, but let's see how...

[04:19]

Before I disperse it, what is it? Exactly what shape anger is this? And the clearer you are about the anger, the more you'll learn from it. So learn from it before you disperse it. Before you disperse your life, learn about it. Because if you disperse it, guess what's going to happen? Another one's going to come. This life is non-stop. You cannot stop life. It just keeps coming. We are plugged into it, you know, a long, an infinite process. And you can disperse it here and disperse it there, but it just keeps coming back, keeps coming back, keeps coming back, keeps coming back. There's no end to this thing. So, you know, hold it away, hold it away, hold it away. You know, Buddha go out and say, you know, long term, we got to face it. Make our peace with it. And full scale. Make our peace with full scale life. Not just keep kind of dispersing, dispersing. That's why I say, let's try to, you know, fully live.

[05:26]

Fully live. Of course, when you fully live, there's problems in fully living, right? Because what happens when you fully live? What happens? Death comes close. If you shrink back and only live 92%, 92% death is kind of 8% away, right? 10% death is like 90% away. Hey, I'm so little and I'm so puny and I'm so kind of restrained and repressed and holding back. Nobody's going to bother me. They may kick me, but I'm not going to feel it anyway because I'm so tight. I'm hurting so much pain anyway from being so tight that nobody can hurt me. But when you fully express yourself, you have no distance between you and death. At the surface of life is death. Death all around life. They coexist. The fullness of your life? Death. But then that's your life. That's what your life is.

[06:27]

And when you fully express your life, ultimately, completely, that takes love. Because what you tend to do is you tend to overdo it or undo it. You have to carefully, fully, you know, find that place which is true. Not approximately, but your true expression. That's your life. And that's very educational. Because when you see exactly what your life is, you realize it's not that. You think it is before you can see it's not that. And if you don't, if you hold back on what you think it is, you can't be relieved from what you think it is. And then you just go and keep thinking, well, life, my life's what I think it is. My life is just this little thing here. And I'm hurt that somebody's messing with my little thing. I thought if I had this little thing, I'd get by it. I'd tolerate it. But no, they're picking on my little thing, too. And I'm angry about that. So you find out, oh, actually what I'm really angry about is that I'm not living my life fully.

[07:32]

So first thing, I'm angry that I'm not living my life fully. And then I'm angry that people are giving me a hard time with my not even living my life fully. Give me a break. I've already basically sacrificed my life. Be nice to me. But when you fully live your life, you don't expect people to be nice to you anymore. Why should they be nice to you? Why should they give you compensation? You've got your whole life. You don't need anything more. Realize that although you're totally threatened, you're only threatening your independence. And actually, everybody gives you your life. But they don't do you any favors. They just give you your life. So you've got to fully express yourself. When you feel anger, there it is. What is it? And if analysis helps you understand it, good. Rather than analysis blows it away. And then analysis helps you. Where does the anger start and where do you stop? Who are you? What are you? What's bothering you?

[08:34]

Where's the pain? Okay, now I get back to the... Now I feel pain. Rather than disperse the pain... And if you can fully express your pain and fully feel your pain, then you can practice patience with your pain. And if you can practice patience with your pain, you can understand your pain. You can see the source of your pain. And you'll see the source of your pain, and it has something to do with yourself. And then you see the source of your pain, something to do with yourself, and you can see yourself. And then you see yourself, and so on. Full expression. But again, you have to be loving about this so you don't underexpress or overexpress. You've got to do it just right. if you think that you did it it's karma yeah and if you think it's beneficial if you think to do it then, according to your understanding, you think you did a wholesome, skillful, helpful thing.

[09:48]

So for you, to the best of your knowledge, it's a wholesome karmic act. What if you call your boss an asshole? Pardon? What if you call your boss an asshole? Yeah? And if you think you said that, then you think you did an act of verbal karma. You think you did that? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did. Yeah, so that's your understanding. You have to take responsibility that you think that way. And something will happen to you because you think you did that. Now what some people do is they try to not notice what they're doing, but it doesn't take it away. Not noticing that you think you did it doesn't take away the result. It just means you're more surprised when the result comes.

[10:52]

Yeah, right. But the question is, tell us or not, whether you think that was wholesome that you told him, whether you think it was helpful to tell him that he was an asshole. Yeah. I felt good at the time. I felt truthful. I felt honest. I know I'm going to get in trouble, but I don't care. So I'm not sure if it's good or bad. It's possible that you could say. that it's somewhat different to say, you are a flaming asshole, than saying, I think you're a flaming asshole. It's slightly different. Generally speaking, the latter is more wholesome. Unless you're talking to someone who's fairly enlightened and they know what you mean when you say... that you are shorthand for I think you are.

[11:56]

Strictly speaking, to say to somebody, I think you are an asshole, it can be a very intimate and loving thing to say. And again, if you did it, if you did it soulfully, which you're not claiming, I don't know, I can't understand it. Well, you just can say it. You said, I think, I'm pretty sure I did that. You said that. That means you didn't, that means, I'm saying, my proposition is that means you didn't fully express yourself. That's the second reason. You think you did it. When you fully express yourself, you do not feel like you did it. It's like you're a vehicle of the divine. I was lost in the moment and then after it was over, it was almost about 10 minutes, I told them everything I thought.

[13:03]

The 10-minute thing? Maybe now you're lying and you just don't want to tell us that really you weren't there, that your self did drop away and there was full self-expression and there was nobody there and it wasn't karma. Yeah, well, yeah. The first time you're that present in your life, it's just blinding radiance, and you're just later looking back. Well, they're closely related. They're closely related. Again, you know, there are certain situations which are very violent, you know, so violent that actually in this movie, the guy who actually committed the murder described what it's like to shoot a policeman's head. And he talked about how everything kind of got blown away at the moment, you know, how bright it was. But, you know, it's a subtle difference between what violence creates and still being present and loving at the same time.

[14:04]

which tends to eliminate the violence and create intimacy and reciprocity and interdependence. So you're not sure what happened, but I'm just saying it's to speak to tell someone how you feel with tremendous rage and have it really be something that you don't do. And I've had people talk to me who've expressed rage to me and I didn't feel like a person was there or a self was there talking to me. I felt like it was, you know, a person was speaking for the world. That, you know, 200 people can't talk to me. Sometimes one person talks to me for 200. So sometimes we say, when you shout the shout of the Great Assembly, for everybody, it's not really karma. Like when you see, when you see, I don't know, something, you know, a child being treated cruelly, or anybody being treated cruelly, let's say just a child being treated

[15:19]

You can scream, no, or you can cry in rage at that thing, but even if it's your child, it's not necessarily personal. It's not necessarily something you're doing. It's something that everybody in the universe feels about that, including the person who's doing it. That's for the world. You're doing the shout of the Great Assembly of all beings. And that is what we mean by not being angry. That's not being angry when you express that kind of rage on behalf of the whole population of living creatures. The whole universe says, no, it's not this way. And you say that with your whole heart and you don't say it kind of like, well, I'm going to say this, but maybe I'm doing something wrong and people won't like this or something like that. This has not got nothing to do with it. You're speaking for everyone. called the wrath of God.

[16:22]

And maybe that was the wrath of God. I don't know. But now when I ask you, you said you did it. So, you know, maybe you're... Well, yeah, maybe... Again, you said weird. Weird is an interesting word. Weird means a destiny. Maybe it was just your fate to do that. Maybe at the time you weren't there. And maybe later you're just saying, well, probably since I'm usually there when I do things, I was there then too. And probably I did do it. But maybe at the time you didn't, and now you're just sort of like assuming you were. Maybe at the time you weren't. Anyway, it's possible to do things that are usually harmful. when a person does it and have that same act be something that's not a person doing it. But is the whole world acting through a person for the education of another? Some people need people to scream at them to wake up. They need it. And they get it, and sometimes it's very helpful to them.

[17:26]

It snaps them out of a deep sleep. Sometimes they're lying, [...] they're lying. They just keep lying and lying, and nobody screams out loud enough to say, no, you're lying, this is not true. Loud enough. And then finally, somebody has the destiny to speak for everybody and says, And a person goes, oh yeah, well, it's true. I got it. Thank you. Maybe that was the case. I don't know. But when a person does that, I think, I don't want to make rules exactly, but after you're done, you don't do it again. You know, you're not angry afterwards. You do it again, and then that's... Even the first one, you know, but you don't do it again. It's over.

[18:27]

I think so. But I don't like to make that rule exactly, but it's kind of like that. It's kind of like it's over. The job's done. The expression's been made. And maybe you'll get in trouble for it at that time. You're not into calculating whether you're going to survive this or not. And so in that sense, it's kind of insane because you might get in trouble for it, like this guy named Jesus did, right? Buddha didn't do that kind of stuff. He didn't get in trouble. Teachers and some Buddhist masters and mistresses have done that kind of stuff and got in trouble for it and it's still been very helpful. But usually, actually, you don't get in trouble for it. Usually it works. The person says, thank you. I needed that. It's happened to me that way. I've seen it happen, and maybe you were that way at that time, and just now you're looking back and being humble. Next time, try to pay attention when that happens.

[19:33]

It could happen this afternoon. Yes. If you talk a little more about being fully self-expressive where you are on the receiving end. That is, it seems like one thing to say, I'm going to be fully self-expressive and right there over something that essentially is coming from me. Right. And then how do you maintain that presence when somebody else is about to do something to you, be it fully self-expressive or manipulative or hurtful or untruthful? Well, about is a little hard. Let's start with is. Is that okay? Rather than it's how do I be fully expressive when someone's about to talk to me, how about how do I be fully self-expressive when somebody is talking to me? Well, I don't know.

[20:42]

No one knows. But while you were just talking a minute ago, I was trying to be fully expressive while you were talking. I was listening to you. And? Did you see how I did it? Did you see how it happened? How I was being fully expressive while you were talking to me and I was listening to you? I couldn't tell whether you were being fully expressive or not. Did it look like I was listening to you? Yes. Did it look like I could have maybe not been listening to you? Yes. I'm not trying to look. I was specifically watching out to not look like I was listening. And I was feeling pretty, you know, I was willing for that to be my life. Okay? I mean, this is your life, Rev. Anderson, listening to her talk? Yes? This is okay with you? That was okay for my life to be that way. This is the way I'm willing to spend Saturday afternoon on a lovely day, listening to you talk.

[21:49]

I'm satisfied listening to you talk. That's how I felt. I felt, you know, I didn't feel like I was holding back while you were talking. Does it make any difference whether you feel like you're in a safe environment? Yes. Everything... And the way I would listen to you would be different if, you know, people were attacking me from three directions while you were talking to me. I would listen to you in a I would be interspersing listening with other things, but each one I would feel, maybe, I hope I could feel I was fully expressing myself while being receptive too. You can be fully expressing yourself, you know, like supposedly acting, but hearing is, listening is acting too. The landscape of your mind when you're listening is flat. That's the shape of the mind when you're listening. So the karmic quality of listening is neutral.

[22:56]

But if you're doing the listening, the message you're doing when you're listening is neutral because there's no impulse. When you're receiving information, your organs are really basically at rest. You're receptive, right? But then in response to receiving information, you come into a state of mind which has a landscape and dynamism and apparent action. But when you're listening fully, there's no self doing the listening. So you check this out. When you're listening, is there a self that's listening? Then it's karma. It's neutral, but it's karma. If you fully listen, does the self drop away? I propose maybe it does. Check it out. What's the difference between kind of listening and having the self here ready for maybe the next thing they say, and how much longer are they going to talk, and if they talk much longer, I'm going to stop listening? All that going on while you're listening?

[23:58]

Or like listening and not even knowing how long they listened, and not even know how much longer you're going to let them talk. This kind of thing. Try to get in there and see how do you listen. And when you're in a more active state where your consciousness has these clear shapes and inclinations, is there a self there that's connected to this inclination? And then does full expression bring the self into, draw the self into the expression and have the self drop? Because the expression is so full. So both receptive and expressive, in both receptive and active, can you have full expression and in both cases does the self drop away? Do you have that feeling? And so in this example, where she was yelling at her boss whether in the full expression the self dropped away or not.

[25:06]

And I also propose just that it may be the case that when you're fully receptive, So fully expressing receptivity, the self drops away, and that might lead to an active moment of full expression where the self drops away too. Being really receptive, really active, really receptive, really active, those can follow each other in full expression. And the self is not an addition to your life. Can you give me four receptive ideas? sure you can do that you can be fully or even you can be while you're talking okay i you i can i can be listening to you fully listening to you fully expressing myself feeling like people really are like virtuoso listeners i mean they're fantastic listeners

[26:10]

I mean, like, they are a blessing on the world, the way they listen. It's the best thing they do, is they're listening. There's a story about two Chinese guys. One was a lute player, and the other one was a listener. And the lute player used to play the lute for this listener. He played for other people too, but he mainly played for this one guy, because when this guy listened to him, he could really play. It's like a muse, right? And then the guy died, and he tore the strings of his lute out. Because nobody could listen like that. He couldn't play anymore. So listening can be like a transcendent act when you give yourself... Okay? And you can get that good at listening, so you transcend your egoistic concerns, you know, and you just give your whole life. And some people like that.

[27:12]

They go to concerts, and they love to go to concerts because they can really give themselves to these artists. And the whole body just goes, just one, just two big ears, and there's no self. And they get to be free of self for a little while. The artist gets to play to a selfless being. And it's beautiful, right? It's a great thing in this world. However, right in the middle of that kind of listening, even while the person's still talking, you can just flat out stop listening to them and start thinking about menus for dinner or whatever you want. In fact, some people do. And you can wholeheartedly stop listening to them and fully express not listening to them. And you can tell them or not. I just want to tell you that I'm going to stop listening to you now for three minutes. You can keep talking if you want to, but I'm going to take a little break. Now, if you're really a great listener, the person might say, well, I think I'll stop too then.

[28:14]

Because I just love it when you listen to me. And it's not really worth talking when you're not listening. I sometimes tell people this. You may not know it, but when you're not around, if you all left, I wouldn't sit here and keep talking like this. Because you don't know when you're gone what I do, right? But actually, when you all leave here, I just sit here quietly. It's a kind of response. When people listen like you do, I talk like this. And if you all said to me, you can keep talking, Reb, but we're just going to think about something else for a little while. We're all going to be concentrating on our breathing and posture for about 10 minutes now. So since we care about you, we just wanted to know what's happening with us, okay? I would stop. Partly not just because I didn't want to bother you, but because I'm actually talking to you.

[29:18]

I think if you're in the middle of really listening to somebody wholeheartedly, fully expressing yourself, not karma even, at that point, actually in selfless meditation of listening so wholeheartedly, that if you decide to selflessly, wholeheartedly not listen to them and think about something else, I think it'd be great to say, that's what I'm going to do. That'd be great. And then they probably would stop, because if you're listening to them that way, they probably feel it. on some level. And it's okay. There's many ways to wholeheartedly express yourself, many. Anything that's happening is an opportunity for wholehearted expression, and in wholehearted expression the self drops away, and when the self drops away it's not karma anymore.

[30:11]

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