So I have this fantasy. You want to hear a fantasy I have? It's kind of a difficult fantasy. I'm kind of scared to tell you. But, you know, do you want to hear it? It might be difficult for you to hear, too. You ready for it? I think it will, but are you ready for it? I'm asking you, though, are you ready for this one? It's a little bit... It's kind of hard for you to hear. Are you ready? Want to hear it? I have this fantasy that you're not being very playful. Sorry. I just wanted to get that out there. That's just a feeling I have. But I wanted to practice telling you about it. Now we can check to see, is it a shared reality? How many people think you're being unplayful? Wow.

[01:02]

How many think you're being moderately playful? How many people think you're being really playful? Well, you see, that's pretty playful, what we just did. Yes. Okay, that was pretty playful. He said, I'm not playful because he knows I want him to be playful. Okay? Now, he just told me of a fantasy. His fantasy is, this is my fantasy about you, that you have this fantasy that I want you to be playful. Now, do I actually feel that way? Do I actually want to be playful? You're right. And you're resisting me? You want to resist me? Now, let me check this. Do you have the fantasy that I want you to stop resisting me? I actually am kind of enjoying your resisting me.

[02:03]

It makes it more interesting. If nobody resists, I think we've got a dead situation here. So actually, although I do want you to be playful, I think it's going to be more fun if you resist first. Like, I had this pattern from my childhood, which I'm not so much into anymore, but I noticed that most of my girlfriends were girls that walked up to me and said, I don't like you. Or, I don't want to talk to you," or something like that. And I always wondered, why are you telling me that? Why didn't you go out of your way to come over here and tell me that you don't want to talk to me? And I would think, gee, you're really interesting. It worked on me. That was the perfect technique. Yeah, right.

[03:05]

Like, hey, bud, I'm unavailable to you, big time. But still, it's not just unavailable, because I see some other gorgeous people walking by, and I think, they're probably unavailable. But when they walk over and say, just want you to know I'm unavailable, they don't have to say that. And in fact, if they do come over and say they're unavailable, they've just made themselves available. They've just shown me something about themselves. And it's kind of interesting. It's kind of dynamic. And this is the story of most of my girlfriends. The unavailable ones that just walked by didn't become my girlfriends. It's the ones that went walking by and made a direct perpendicular turn, walked over and said, no way. Did I tell you the story about the girl who stuck the tongue out? You know that story? You don't know that story? Really? It's a good one, you want to hear it? So this is when I was, it's like a year before I went into my, you know, room and it was quiet.

[04:15]

This is when I was seven, not eight. So I was seven and I didn't have a nice room at this time so I was outside all the time. I was running around playing tag with boys, and I don't know what, it seems to me, I have this memory, I don't know if it's true, that there were like three or four girls sort of sitting together watching the boys play tag. And every time I ran by the girls, one of them stuck her tongue out at me, like this. That was a thing that was done about 53 years ago. They did this, they made this sound. Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh. The kid do that now? So they're saying, eh, [...] in the same thing? Taking the tongue out and you go, eh. They do that now? It's probably made one of those basic human... You're supposed to be resisting me. Knock it off.

[05:18]

You're not that way. Resisting, yeah. I like the way you are. I like it. I like it that you're inconsistently resisting. Spotty resistance over here. Anyway, so she did that several times. So then after whatever, three or four times, I decided to punish her in some way for teething me. It was kind of a tease, right? It was supposed to be negative. Like, you're a jerk, or I hate you, or something like that. It wasn't like... It was like... So anyway, I ran over to her to punish her in some way. Tell her, knock it off, or knock her off, or whatever. So she gets up and she runs.

[06:18]

And she runs, and I lived in the country at that time, and she ran out into a cornfield, but the corn was not yet very high. I caught her, and I pushed her down on the ground, and I sat on her chest, and I raised my fist to hit her. punish her for this disrespectful behavior. And then something happened. I don't know what it was. I wish I could go back there and see what she did. I don't know if she went, you know, winked at me or smiled or... But she gave me somehow something about her. Instead of punching her, I kissed her. And it seemed like that was exactly what she wanted. And she kissed me back, and so that's what we did then for the rest of the summer. Every day, unless it was raining real hard, we would go out in the woods and do this kissing thing.

[07:31]

which, you know, got really tiring. But anyway, we couldn't resist. That's very attractive. I mean, I was not about to go over to a girl and say, well, could I kiss you? And she knew that. I don't know how she knew. I don't know how people know these things. But they do. I'm looking at my watch, but it's on my wrist. Well, is there anything else you want to enact? Yes, Louise? I want to know something about meditation practice and what it has to do with it. My teacher used to call our meditation practice the tenderizer.

[08:48]

He used to call our Zen practice of meditation the tenderizer. The tenderizer. And in fact, I do find that the case that if people sit, the process of sitting kind of like, to some extent, you know, especially long sittings, it kind of like, it's like pounding on meat. The experience of just sitting there, if people continue to do it, what they go through kind of like It tenderizes them. They get softer and softer the longer they sit. Now, of course, part of what happens when they sit is they feel, especially in the long sittings, in the short sittings, it doesn't happen so much, but in the long sittings, in the short sittings over a really long period, if you sit a little bit over a really long time, it'll do it. Or a long time, many years, like sit once a day for years, or sit 20 times a day for a week or a month. The experience of just sitting where, you know, whatever fantasies you have of getting something out of it or whatever, and get frustrated, and what's happening just gradually becomes so impressive.

[10:03]

And if you can somehow allow yourself to stay in the situation and receive all this experience, well, you're not like trying to And you try to make the experience different, you try to make it more this way or that way, and you can't do it. The longer you sit, the more you realize that you can't control. And the more you realize that trying to control makes you more upset. the more you realize that being hard and tough is painful, is more painful, makes it more painful. Taking this practice and what's happening to you seriously is more painful. And seeing that, you gradually get softer and softer, and you get more and more relaxed, and more and more playful. The longer you sit, the more playful you become. But usually,

[11:05]

It's not all because it's all pleasant, but rather that you learn that you can have your experience. And also, practicing together, you gradually see more and more that it's playing together. So our meditation practice is very much, especially the sitting part, where we just sit, it's very much the trust, relaxation and play part. And then from this just sitting, which softens us and makes us more and more playful and relaxed, we enter into a realization of creativity, which can happen in the sitting or other places. But it's particularly the sitting that we develop trust and relaxation. When I first, like if I, even in a meditation retreat with people, and I go around the room at the beginning of the meditation retreat, checking people's posture and making suggestions, their bodies are, generally speaking, at the beginning of the retreat, a lot of their bodies, anyway, are pretty tight.

[12:17]

Sometimes their posture, if I make a suggestion, a lot of them are kind of like, I've got enough problems, leave me alone. You know, they may be humped over in some kind of difficult kind of like energy squashing posture. And I make a suggestion of what I feel would be a more energetic way to sit. And their body won't go with my suggestion. It kind of says, leave me alone. I'm not going to move. That's some of them. But then those very same people at the end of the retreat, after experiencing and becoming tenderized by the consequence of their posture and not taking my advice, and resisting this nicer posture which is in some ways more difficult but more alive, at the end of the retreat sometimes I make a suggestion and they say, thank you. Their body goes, okay, yeah, alrighty. And they go into that posture and then they go, wow, you know, they're like alive.

[13:20]

Because they suffered with resisting for seven days or whatever. I didn't keep pushing and shoving, saying, take my advice, take my advice. Just once I try touch, you know, and it's like touching the back of a turtle. It's shaped like a turtle and it's hard like a turtle. So I just touched a turtle, okay, later. I come back, turtle, okay, later. And pretty soon the turtle, and then pretty soon it's like a, or crab, okay, later. And pretty soon it's a soft-shell crab, right? And pretty soon the crab starts like moving with my hands. And pretty soon just a slight touch and the crab goes, okay. And that happens over the time. Another way I sometimes, another image I sometimes have at the beginning of a retreat, I sometimes, I don't want to give good talks at the beginning because I feel like a good talk is like water and you're pouring water like on a dry ground and you know when you pour water on a dry ground it just runs off. But if the ground is moistened and soft and you pour water on it, it goes right in.

[14:25]

So I don't want to like give my good talk and have it just run off to people. So I just make kind of, like I say, just some kind of inspiring things at the beginning, like, you'll see later. I'll tell you some stuff later or whatever, you know. And as their tears, you know, moisten the ground of their body and mind, at the end of the session, all I have to do is go, boo, and the boo goes right in. Just sinks right in. It doesn't matter what you say. It becomes, they turn it into the truth because they're so receptive. That's something that answers your question somewhat? We can go on about this forever, but that's basically The sitting is very much part of softening us and developing trust in this process. And being playful in the sitting posture. Being playful with your body and mind under the challenging circumstances of having one.

[15:30]

And in long sittings, you feel the challenge of having a body. Whereas usually people, if they're running, moving around all day, they don't notice how challenging it is to have a body. But you sit still and you feel like, this is kind of hard to have a body. It's really difficult to take care of it, even though I'm just sitting here. Right. That's right. Anything else? It's having trust in the practice. It's having trust. Not so much trust in the practice, but trust that you can. Trust that the practice would be all right. Now you hear about the practice. The practice sounds good. Doesn't it sound good to relax and be playful and free? I think the practice sounds good. Doesn't it sound wonderful to understand and be free? I think people like that. But what they have trouble with is, like, would I dare to, like, allow that to happen to me?

[16:35]

Which means, would I dare to let go of my resistance and my holding? If the trust at the beginning do you feel that you'd be safe to, like, relax? It's not so much that you trust relaxation, because you kind of do trust relaxation, you just don't know if you trust that it'll be all right to relax. Maybe you get fired if you relax. Maybe you wet your pants if you relax. Actually one of that, that I actually had that problem, not when I didn't wet my pants, but when I first entered into intensive monastic training, I started to notice that certain things were relaxing, and I was afraid that there would be some leakage. There wasn't, but you know, a lot of us do extra tightening around certain areas just to make sure that there won't be any leakage. This is one of the aspects of being uptight. up tight around the sphincters.

[17:38]

So we're afraid that if we start... So I wasn't trying to relax, I just noticed that there were certain areas were just much more relaxed. A lot of extra tension wasn't there, and I thought, hmm, it's okay, and it was. But I was a little bit worried. And other things start loosening up and you think, is this going to be okay if I'm not like a real... Another example of that was one time I went to a seminar, and it was a seminar of scholars, Buddhist scholars, and they were talking about Buddhist idealism. And it was a very high-level, it was a very precise, rigorous kind of conversations about philosophical concepts. And then that night, after that seminar, I went with my wife to a birthing class. And the room was full of husbands and several women, like 20 women, just about ready to let go of their babies.

[18:44]

And the room was, like, not precise. And it wasn't sharp. It was more like, whoa, you know, the big opening. It's got to be. And I kind of like made some wisecrack about the kind of like the soft-minded dimension of the room. And then I got some feedback from a certain person that I was there with that kind of showed me that I really got way off balance, you know, into being really uptight about my mind. You know, I thought you had to have a really tight, tight mind. But that's why we need to hang out with different kinds of people. So it's not exactly trusting the practice, but trusting that it would be all right to practice. Then after that, then you can trust the practice.

[19:47]

Then you can do the practice. Anything else? Yes. Yes. That's right. Uh huh. Well, you raised several points there.

[20:53]

Point number one, he said, sometimes in meditation retreats you can relax and become soft. But then he said something about, but in life in general, we seem to become more tense as we go along. Generally speaking, people get more and more tense every day. until we get to a point when we're rather, in our later years, when we're so tense that we walk around. Because we're so tense, we know that if we fall down, we would break in several pieces. So then we're even more tense. So people, generally speaking, as they get older, get tenser and tighter and harder, mentally and physically. This is something we have to look forward to. There is a tendency toward ossification. in our life towards becoming hard, in other words, towards dying. Okay, that's a tendency we have to deal with. So, we need to I hesitate to say counteract, but we need to complement it with things which will soften us.

[22:05]

We need to tender a pound on our body, pound on it. We need to touch it and turn it and twist it and jump and test it and stretch it. Again, with stretching, when you're tense, And you're tight if you try to stretch. For example, first of all, if you don't stretch, you're just going to stay tight and get tighter. If you don't stretch your mind, you're going to get tighter in your mind. If you don't stretch your body, you're going to get tighter. Not looser, tighter. Babies, when they're born, are as loose as they're going to get. They get tighter. Now if they do stretching exercises, they can stay pretty loose for quite a while. And if they keep doing it, they keep pretty loose. But their minds are not necessarily so loose, We need to stretch our mind and our body, otherwise we're just going to get harder and harder. However, when you are stiff, if you try to stretch, it is more uncomfortable than before you started to stretch.

[23:12]

If you're stiff and you're walking around, you're uncomfortable and you're scared of anything happening because you know you're not going to be able to adjust because you're so tense and stiff. So you're scared, and that makes you more tense. And the more tense you get, the more you feel like you just don't want to do anything. So might as well have a fit. Now, if you would stretch, you would even feel worse because the stretching would show you even more how tense and tight you are. So when you start stretching, there's a resistance to the stretching. So you have to be gentle and gentle and gentle and gentle, until you can, you know, stretch and relax. Stretch and relax. And pretty soon, you stretch, and it's more difficult than when you didn't stretch, but then you relax, and you stretch some more, and you relax, and you stretch some more, and you relax, and you stretch some more, and you relax. And pretty soon, you get pretty stretched.

[24:14]

Like, I heard this story about, what's his name, Pablo Casals. He was a cellist. And, but every morning when he was, every morning, in particular I heard a story about him when he was either 90 or 95, when he'd get up in the morning he was really stiff, and he walked with a shuffle, and he could barely move his fingers. And every morning as soon as he got up, or after he went to the bathroom or whatever, he would go to either the piano I think to the piano, and he'd play a harpsichord piece by Bach called the Well-Tempered Clavier. And he'd play the same thing every day with his stiff fingers. He'd start to play. When he first started playing, he could barely play it. But by the time he finished, his fingers were moving nimbly. It probably hurt to do it, but he did it. And when he finished, his fingers were moving. And then also when he got up from the chair, he walked without a shuffle. So anyway...

[25:16]

We have to keep stretching, otherwise we're just going to get tighter and tighter. We have to keep moving into areas where we're not relaxed and meet them and admit that we're not relaxed. And admitting that we're not relaxed will promote relaxation. And that's another example of we need enough trust to go where we're tight, to go where we're blocked. So for example, one of the things I'm doing now is learning the tango. And it's painful for me to learn it because I'm no good. But if I stay in the Zen priest realm, where I have a lot of experience, I'm just going to get tight. So I have to do things that I'm no good at, like dancing. I have to play with my grandson. I need to do things that I'm not an expert at, where I'm a beginner, where I'm awkward, where I'm uncomfortable.

[26:18]

And to learn these things, I have to relax. And if I don't relax, I learn how not being relaxed interferes with the learning, which makes it even more painful. And the pain relating to the tension, gradually there's relaxation back and forth. This is a process. This is like, we must do this. Otherwise, we're not going to ever realize the truth and liberate this world. Together. And martial arts, in martial arts, you say if you're gentle, you invite aggression. Maybe so. What is it that invites it? Is there aggression coming towards us in this world? Seems to be. Seems to happen sometimes. Are we inviting it? I don't know. I don't think I can control the amount of aggression coming towards me. Pardon?

[27:22]

Well, I think if you're aggressive, that does pretty much guarantee you're going to get it back. That way you can... If you want aggression in your life, then aggression will... If you're aggressive, you'll have it. But if you don't want aggression in your life, you'll probably also have aggression in your life. However, if you don't really try to avoid aggression or create aggression, I'm not saying you won't have aggression. That won't necessarily stop aggression. Again, X, I said F, remember? You can put aggression in there. What I'm saying is, if it's X, and X can be aggression, if it's X, learn to trust in the situation of aggression. It doesn't mean you trust aggression is good. It means that when there's aggression, you trust that you need to deal with it. You trust that it's not going to help to run away.

[28:28]

Sometimes it might, but basically that's a way of dealing with it. And it's not going to help usually to fight it. What's going to help is to learn to trust in the situation to the extent that you're going to face it and work with it. And trust then that relaxing with the situation will be beneficial. And get enough information so that you can learn to relax. Because again, in martial arts courses, it's maybe not that all martial arts teachers will agree with me, but in martial arts courses where they're trying to teach people how to deal with aggressive energy, the first thing they teach you how to do is to fall. So that you will be not afraid of getting thrown all over the room. So when aggressive energy comes, you won't be afraid. In other words, you won't tense up. Because if you tense up with the aggressive energy, you will not learn how to deal with it skillfully.

[29:31]

You need to learn how to flow with it. If you can flow with it, it won't hurt you. If you fight it, it'll probably hurt you or somebody. But part of the way you can trust relaxing and flowing with aggressive energy is if you have developed the ability to fall. That will make you more relaxed. That's one of the ingredients that will help you. When you relax with aggressive energy, then you can learn how to play with it. When you can play with aggressive energy, you're basically relaxed. you're a master. And then you can see the creativity in aggressive energy and become free from the aggressive energy. Or as you say, trust in the situation, relax with the situation, trust with the aggressive energy, relax with the aggressive energy, play with the aggressive energy, be creative with the aggressive energy, understand the aggressive energy, be free of the aggressive energy, and then even use the aggressive energy to benefit beings.

[30:34]

In Judo, they say play. We play Judo. Judo is a gentle way. That's called the gentle way, actually. Judo is called the gentle way. Judo is called the gentle way. It's the gentle way of dealing with aggressive energy so that all beings are protected. We do need to be martial artists, in a sense, in this world. There's so much aggressive energy. We do need to learn if we want to help this world, how to deal with this energy. So we do need to learn how to relax with it, how to play with it, how to be creative with it, how to understand it, be free of it, and then use it, and use our creativity to benefit beings. Because we're not going to stop aggressive energy. It's part of the human body. My sweet little grandson goes around going, kiai, kiai.

[31:38]

He's a sweetheart. He is the sweetest little boy I ever knew. He's much sweeter than his mother, my daughter, ever was. My daughter was, I love her, she's beautiful, she's wonderful, but not sweet. He is sweet, and he is kiai, kiai. And he does stuff like this too. He's two and a half. He does stuff like this. It goes like this. You take a green ball like this. He does stuff like that. It's part of the world. It's part of the deal with these beautiful bees that they're aggressive. And so I say to him, no hitting, no biting, no hitting, no biting.

[32:43]

I have to tell him that because he wants to hit and bite. I also like to bite, by the way. And when I was a little boy in that room I was telling you about, up there by myself, I used to bite my toys. I like the feeling of biting things. Particularly in those days, we used to have wood toys that were painted, and you can bite into them, you know, and it feels really good to bite through the paint into the wood, in soft wood. I didn't like chewing on pencils so much. I liked big toys to bite. And I loved that feeling, and I liked to bite people, too. But I understand that most people do not like to be bitten. So I'm, you know, I'm not really that much of a problem. I don't bite people. It's also dangerous to bite people because there's all kinds of, like, bacteria in your mouth, which is not good for people. So I don't bite people, but I would like to be able to, and I'm not. It's just one of the things I can't do, but I'm okay. You know, I'm okay with that.

[33:44]

Doug? Doug? You don't want to steal the show? Oh, come on. Steal it. Come on up here and steal the show. Upstage. Upstage. Steal the show. I had a situation. Are you OK up here? Mom, you know, why did you get a closer experience? Oh, he's going to ask me. What? You know Ben. Hi, Ben. Is your name Ben Edwards? No, Gibbs. Gibbs. Oh, your mom's named Edwards and your dad's named Gibbs? You're Ben Gibbs? Hi, Ben. Is there anything you want to talk about? That's what I used to say too.

[34:57]

Yes. Yeah, I had a situation the other day occur when I, after I dropped my wife off at work, came home, got five minutes to seven. There was a man across the street, and he walked over to me, and he said, what time is it? I looked at my watch. I knew what time it was. I looked at my watch. I said, it's about 7 o'clock. He said, 7 o'clock? It's not 10 o'clock. He said, it's not 10 o'clock. I said, no, it's 7. He was about, where's he at? No, he was coming toward me. Oh, he's talking from a distance. Yeah, but he was coming toward me. Yeah. And... My son leaves about 7 o'clock. He takes the car and he goes to school. This guy kept coming at me. He was threatening. He was threatening? Yeah. He said, I should kick your ass. It's not 10 o'clock. I said, no. It's not 10 o'clock. It's 7 o'clock. He's getting closer. He's about this many. And we have a gate around our house.

[36:22]

I opened the gate, and I locked the gate. I mean, I wasn't going to try. I don't know Aikido. What I was saying to him wasn't working. It really wasn't working. And he was livid. I mean, really ugly. Well, he stood out there for quite a while, 10 minutes. And my son was a little late that day, so I didn't tell him this guy's out there. I was hoping to go away before Tony announced the car. Tony's his son, who practices Aikido, who's still in the house. He's brushing his teeth. Tony, the Aikido guy, is brushing his teeth. So I didn't want to... He's pretty good at Aikido, too. He's pretty good at Aikido. But I didn't want him going out there and being confronted with this. I didn't know the guy was drug-praised or what. Anyway, so finally... Tony called out for me because I hadn't come in and said I'm home. So he didn't know if I was really there. He just called out, but I'm usually there. So I said, well, there's a guy out there, and he threatened me.

[37:26]

I don't know if I want you to go out there, really. He said, oh, well, let's go out there. By this time, he was walking across the street, but he was still keeping his eye on the house. Well, I called the police. So a policeman comes up, and he comes to the gate, and I went out, and I told him the story. I said, I think this guy is waiting for someone in a couple houses down, but I'm not sure. But I told him the story. So he walked over to the gun, and he bought him a police car, and he put handcuffs on him. That's really not what I want to happen. I really didn't like that. I felt really badly about that. Anyway, they put the guy in the car, and he comes back, and he says, now, he had a knife, and I took that from him. Told me his name, and he said everything that you said was not true.

[38:27]

I talked to the police officer and told him the situation. He said he was actually waiting for this fellow, my neighbor, two doors down. And so I said, I don't want you to take him to jail, but what I would like you to do is talk to him. I'm telling you, you know, it is 7 o'clock. You need to let the client talk to him. So I said, I don't want you to take him to jail. Tony got the car and left. The police were there. So anyway, the police officer drove him across the street to where the fellow who was going to meet lived. And he took the handcuffs off, which I immediately believed to see. And... Then George, my neighbor, came out.

[39:31]

A fellow got in his truck with him, and I waved at George, and he came over, and I explained to him what happened and how terribly I felt about it. I said, well, Doug, you could use a little psychology. You could have used a little psychology there. I said, yeah, but I don't know this guy. He was threatening me, and I didn't really know. I mean, he was smaller than me, but, you know, I didn't. He could have bitten me, right? Right, right. Well, it turns out, so they drove off. He was actually going to help my neighbor work that day. The next day, excuse me, the next week, this has been a week and a half ago now, this fellow's sitting on the curb again. I was on my way over to Eric's house. It was odd in the morning. I drove over to him and rolled my window down. And I said, you know, I want to apologize to you for what happened the other day. He said, what? I want to apologize for what happened the other day. I said, I really wish I could have done something else, but I couldn't get through to you that it was 7 o'clock. He said, I've only got one good ear.

[40:35]

That's my story. It's kind of a terrible story, isn't it? Why didn't he want to pick you up? Because I told him it was 10 o'clock. I told him it was 7 o'clock, but he, I don't know why, but he's up today. You know it wasn't 10 o'clock, and he wasn't getting the information you wanted. I don't know. Yeah, maybe he thought you said it was 10 o'clock. He really did think. Yeah, yeah. He only got one paper. He wanted to have some tea, I guess. Anyway, that's a... An example of... not wanting to show my son this terrible fear that I was feeling myself, and not wanting to put him in that situation also, he probably, he might have handled it very well. He might have let the guy down gently on his butt, like your story the other day.

[41:37]

Possibly he could have. Or done something else. Anyway, I... I talked back to the guy who ended up in the police car, where he'd probably been many times before. He was very, that was a neat thing. He relaxed. You know, police officers, police officers, put your hands on your back. He knew exactly what to do. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Would you like some tea? Thank you very much.

[42:09]

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