The Shuso Question: Full Spontaneous Encounter

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this point we're used to
for our talk
words from ones on capitol hill
is dominating means cloud mountain
realize the way
that peter
have been living in berkeley for log i meet long time back year he fainted at all three of us out
dem centers was she saw is to air in the he is
we received from transmission here at berkley said sam from so conversion the a couple of years ago ah
so
thank you hassan
so now it's time to test the audio equipment
and can you hear me
try it
that's better it's better for my visual field to everybody in the back in here
okay good
good morning
ah
i came upon the topic for this talk a little while ago ah it's about are broadly speaking how i arrived at my question during the recent she says ceremony which was held at the end of our spring practice period a couple of weeks ago i guess i'm forgetting how long
on
so let's see if i can actually read my note with this large blue object in front of me

so as you know
we enact the issue so ceremony and this is a little bit of a follow on from hose and talk of a week ago about ritual
sometimes i wonder what the difference between ritual and ceremony is but the way i think about it is that ceremony has a lot of rituals and ritual is smaller in scale but in any case we we enact this ritualized ceremony at the end of the practice period
layered in which we have a head student who
gives talks and teas and on leads us in practice and this case that had student was sitting right there exactly where mary is now sitting and in fact i believe it's the same person
so on
ah the
and one of the reasons why i am
wanted to speak about this because our on the day of the ceremony in morning lecture surgeon gave some remarks about the ceremony and the way we ask questions and ceremony hosted the for those of you i don't think there's anybody here at maiden doesn't know about this but i'm going to explain in any case the ceremony
principal part of the ceremony is the on is a question and response by of the members of the practice period to individually to the she so in turn and so on
ah
a surgeon was explaining about how does she so what is the aim is issue seven and responding to the questions what is that what is the aim of the questioners informing and presenting their questions
and he explained that it's done a little bit differently in japan in japan or this ceremony is enacted in soto are the sort of school
at the end of the practice period and all of the questions and answers are pre-determined
ah
but in that case the spirit of the ceremonies is is flowing from a sense of celebration of this whole hearted and enactment of this thing but for us
it's really about trying to come to a question which each person which is personal to her himself the questioner and which aims at the heart of our practice and understanding of dharma
so
sergeant spoke at some length about the nature of the questions
and encouraging us to form our questions by distilling her expression down to matters of ultimate concern
and avoiding framing our questions with introductions explanations and he's also spoke of the says responses as best delivered absent the same complications just seeking to succinctly address the heart of the matter
so as i was thinking about this and i always go through kind of a process of her how to arrive at the ceremony
i was asking myself in preparation for the spectra what's what's the what is the use of a question
what is it what does it make possible
so i would say ah you know obviously we have lots of different kinds of experiences of receiving questions
but it's possible that
this carry the quit asking the question is kind of communicates respect and an acknowledgement that you want something specific from the other person and kind of honesty about why how you are arriving is in this moment
and also holds the possibility
that it's an acknowledgement that the meeting between you and somebody else is a co-created event is to have you involved
it also stimulates the spirit of inquiry and other people who may be present
and ah
presents a context
i've shared understanding that is
you're asking about something that's recognizable to the person you're speaking to
and out of that some greater mutual understanding as possible
so perhaps a good question reveals something about ourselves
for the shiso in this example ah to reveal something of herself
so
then if you've come to a question
there's the question is a serious the situation where you are going to open your mouth and say the service and to me that raises the question of well what is the posture of our attitude of a kind of welcoming presence that
that invites the person that into the interaction
ah
if you come to forward you may be dominating the exchange if you're holding back you not allowing for actual meeting between people
so in she so ceremony it's a there's this opportunity to meet is she so in some new and unexpected way
and
you know my habitual mode of arriving in a situation like that is to kind of hold back
and then sometimes i try to over compensate for that and come too far forward and be a little too aggressive in presenting my question
and that doesn't work really well either but the
the point is not about getting the right question are being perfect
it's about ah
finding a way to open to our vulnerability in the complete to the completely unexpected
this is what a surgeon was talking about in his his remarks was you don't know what's gonna happen nobody knows what's gonna happen let's find out what that could be
that's not for close the possibilities by yielding to are thinking about how it should be how could be
ah all of those kinds of things are kind of hindrances to an openness to something new
and on
and who in some way preparation
for participating in the ceremony
is about kind of trying to let go of those hindrances
for instance or
i have a hindrance which involves you know the great deal of anxiety about sitting in front of a large group of people and speaking
as i was during the period two thousand before i was sort of remembered something in my childhood that was like yeah
i got up in front of a bunch of people and had no idea what i was doing their what i should do it seems to go on forever but the
the question is how are we going to relate to that fact of
experience internal experience how
what is our intention given that you may be
feeling
like you can't do this or something that you get in a you know your story your internal story about some kind of experience you've had in the past gets in the way what is what is your intention so it's not as though i was trying to get rid of that for to ask myself
in the face of that what do i want to do to actually to form a kind of choice around it
and so
my choice was to clarify my intention
to present his talk in a way which is accessible to everyone and a way that people could enjoy
and not be not give in to whatever it is it comes up ah
around that
so as
ah in anticipation of the she saw ceremony or any other situation in which you don't know how will we go
we often like to prepare
and in some sense there's no way to prepare you know you're going to arrive at your turn to ask a question at some point it's like death
you're going to be there
ah
and on the other hand you're always preparing
whether you're aware of it or not
i think some of the best
preparation
for dishes the ceremony is the checkout line at the berkeley bowl
this is the situation in which you are waiting in line at on what does that waiting in line me i'm not quite sure but you're there in some sort of order and you're going to arrive in front of someone who it is
meeting i don't know one hundred people that day more
ah and even if the interaction you have that person
ah
in which you need
is only a moment
only a moment where your eyes meet
and then something else happens
ah
what can you do in that moment what's possible in that moment
i often find i want to communicate respect and gratitude for their support in helping me get through this stage of the shopping trip
knowing that they may not have the capacity
or want to interact with me
but knowing that ah
that this is a human being who i want to recognize
in that moment
so holding back from that seems very disrespectful to me so we i experienced it
ah but coming forward too much may also be that as well because
it's
it's almost as though i need to do i need to sense an invitation to come into that space to do anything more than a simple recognition and a simple recognition is important
so but that but again there's some the other things happen sometimes you find yourself in the middle of a conversation sometimes you both laugh out loud it's unpredictable
but it's something something wonderful can happen in that very brief moment of time if you don't get in a way just let it happened whatever it happens to be

and other situation and we practice meeting each other is for instance this situation
ah we we may have some time in fact he'd let me know when we're about ten minutes away in case it on start talking
ah who have some time for some questions and we welcome in this situation will be welcome questions from anyone
ah
so please don't ask a perfect question come on the other hand ah more experienced students can actually teach by the way they pose their questions
providing an example for other people
so in some ways
important ways i think
the kind of thing that sojourner she was talking about
are we are pretty are these were talking about our practice in a specific context but i think that practice is applicable to these other situations in ways that these other situations can inform
ah us in other aspects of her practice life
so getting back to the question
how do we find our question
a couple of days earlier in the sixteen
i
there wasn't a during lecture there was an exchange between sojourn regime and linda has in which
ah
the phrase wisdom and compassion
and various comments about the relationship between wisdom and compassion and unfortunately linda not here so she could recite from memory everything that took place in that brief conversation but i can't reproduce it but i realized that is stimulated to me a kind of unformed question
some
and i kept asking myself for what is it about this what's the weather what is it that sticks through for me
and part of what i had to do in order to find out what it was a for me was to exercising incredible patience because i kept going back to the
you know the content of the
but was being referred to what was stimulated by the words
you know often we are
we frame an area of discussion or inquiry by a quick phrase wisdom and compassion a little thai at which form and emptiness
well a little dyad which
which ah
ah both encompasses a kind of dualistic view and on closer examination and kind of more holistic view and these are entities are really fascinating discussions about the interpenetration of these different ideas
and yet in the context of the shiso ceremony
we were encouraged to not go into a discursive as i said before a discussion about what all this means but somehow try and find the essence of our question in the middle of it
so this is what i was struggling with because i didn't really want to ask about
wisdom and compassion to have the she saw speak about that in some detail though she may have been willing to
i was on the phone with her with fun
mary a few days after the session and was talking about this now and she said could you repeat your question
just to see how different our perspectives were in the midst of all of that
ah
the
so what i realized was that my question was about the way we frame that discussion the way the words are set up and often the words in these
diets get used all the time in all parts of our life
our are they're they're arranged by the way they most easily roll off the tongue it's pretty common wisdom and compassion compassion wisdom new male and female
man and woman there that there are these are ways in which for whatever reason and there are lots for different reasons
the phrase is held by ourselves in common and in our bodies
in a certain format
and i began to think i began to suspect that my thinking about these discussions about these ideas was actually influenced by the order of the words in the label
and that disturbs me
and
re-framing of course is something that is something that we're used to a particularly in the social political world and there's a tremendous amount of re-framing going on as we know we don't always like it but sometimes we do sometimes we find it useful finding a way to and stick
ourselves from a pattern which we move which may
the influencing the way we talk about something
ah
i remember one phrase that surgeon used in his response with linda the back and forth something about ah compassion is the child of wisdom
and so that the he is and we say that because we usually say compact wisdom and compassion instead of compassion and wisdom or not i don't know
but anyway this is where this is where my question came from this suspicion that is somehow i was not mindfully dealing with
ah the use of this kind of frame for this discussion
and this is the great value of our study together
because we
unpack these things turn them around
and
and
change the way ah
change the way we're thinking her refresh our understanding of the relationship between these different ideas

so

i want to say a little bit about
ah

value of
the way dog and zheng jie
ah direct ist
in his teachings
ah
it always seems to me that what he's pointing to is going beyond the way we normally think of things
and doing so often in a really beautiful way
ah
so i'm gonna just go
come to this
by way of
looking briefly at the the well-known passage in the in the ginger go on
and sort of with a somewhat of a running commentary but to read this
this this is a translation by
norman mondale and muscle ave it's a little bit different than the way we usually phrase it but because like this
to learn the buddha way is to learn oneself
of that seems pretty straightforward pay attention to what is directly in front of you
to learn oneself is to forget oneself
hmm
now
we're looking closely at the south
and we can't find it
to forget oneself
is to be confirmed by all dharmas
that's a lot to take in
sounds good
i'll go with that but it's a lot to take in
to be confirmed by all dharmas is to cast off one's body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well
i'm just barely hanging on here and then it says
all trace of enlightenment disappears
and this traces enlightenment continues without end
and now i'm wondering what happened
so dogan very gracefully
walks us down the road and leaves of someplace we know not where
and i think that tongue
they're trying to
find your question about
practice
about
who is it that you are meeting
involves a similar type of journey
into being willing not to know
where you're going
and just enjoy the ride
until it's over the next thing happens
so i have a suspicion
that there is ample time left for questions six ten minutes of goodness gracious
questions
i think jerry had on hand at first so what are you gonna do next year what am i gonna do this next year when you have to do she someone
the said
process yes yes i suspected my your hindrances
the haven't gone is looking at yourself in looking at the way things work for you sorry your eyes are you ask our isa well it is he like the night it might be much worse
up but i bet you know
when i arrive at whatever moment i recognize what's happening
that's when i will deal with it
don't we just setting up in all jocks name
if you look in this moment in this moment
team
yes yes but don't go outside of this moment
i want to know who won't help for me to look at the prospect of next year
but when you get the next year to be a store customary when you gone for this year there will be storehouse memories there will be a configuration of dharmas that will i will be ah
ah in one way or another aware of
and that's what i'll deal with
ken
how did your childhood experience of nine five
i know what to do have lunch with the people
i incident that experience
well you know it's really hard to say but the reason why it came up was because the experiences one of being in front of a large gathering of
is it becomes get meeting you know and i had the job of showing up in front of everybody with the you know the flags are some sort of ceremonial thing and i think i was supposed to say now we will pledge allegiance to the flag
pretty simple
i didn't happen and nothing nothing happened
just went on and on on
i think to me it it was embarrassing and and shaming and i didn't get any help processing and afterwards and
you know
ah
it creates the impetus for kind of story about how okay this is happening again okay you know you should be aware that this could happen
fact you should be afraid of it
that sort of and i'm talking about that to address your questions and getting very interested in these
responses
my tiger habitual responses yeah that are very deep in your
your response to the world
as how
which did that fear that were you anticipating oh well in some ways yes but but but the key to this is where do you have choice and but how you gonna relate to this because ah
yes that's all happening and i'm bigger than that i have other things going on i want to present his talk
i want to meet you in his situation
that's also happening
so it's not just when we give in we allowed to completely cover the whole world
ha then loss of course
osan
this sort of issues
ah
i think it
he touches on what see it may seem abstract somebody brought it
pressing question
yeah
the nature of i
is easy time what continuity it like this
see
the fifth round it's here as julie
how you act and it could be from the place you've been speaking about
yeah
he he will
is curious about yeah that's a very interesting question it just strikes me off the top of my head it's a little bit about that question i raised what's waiting in line is this a discontinuous experience of just i'm here or is it an experience of
in anticipation of future events and how does that so in some ways you can collapse the to because
the experience of anticipation of of cereal events
is a kind of experience
and
ah
but it's also on
there's a there's there's a there's a flip side to it so where where did how did these to show up in the same situation
how do you
allow
anxiety about something
anxiety generated by thought conception
ah
perhaps stimulated by
ah
thought patterns that you may be familiar with
and also
remain mindful
that in this moment
none of that applies
that is you know that it soon
there are other
this isn't that there's more that their the that there's something beyond that present in this moment
so anyway it's a hard question and
ha we're thinking about carefully thank you
judy
connecting to the south of space
a space on what i hear you speak
something
i might be misremembering areas that have no harm
offers another spin on patience to call and inclusions in and so
it was also the teaching of everything's included smaller so how do you are engaged with
value in business in a situation where it seems like people are excluded experiences is and school
your year so

where do you find your response to was alive and you and blow out about how do i find my response was alive in me when i experience ah
what am i responsible where my
in some level my responses toward inclusiveness for patients and i perceive others in the room or in the space i mean to not be viewing things that way
how do i include them
because i can include the person who's excluded without including the person is excluding them i don't know if that's what you're referring to the kind of setup but i think everything has to be included
to find the right response
mary
so that the idea of freedom to choose in this moment
the out
i am i
we have experienced it
grandma sylvia
when
give gay information
is whether china's not apple's ah yeah i remember kindness
ah ha moment when
i was describing something i said to myself i was eleven years old which was
yes that vow
wow
she says
do you take advice from
better reminds me that the best preparation for she's so ceremony
is not the berkeley bowl it's raising teenagers
those people who are you all know them
who ask you to the unanswerable questions because they love you
and that's true but you were saying

it is
you have to find a way of acceptance
and great patience in order to be able to make that determination
if you can accept everything that's going on then you have
the choice to discern
john including your eleven year old self is required and
don't ignore your eleven old self
yes susan
seems like good
i think oh i'm in the same situation
here
just let me say a think it's helpful to align ourselves
we're not in the same situation yeah
yes i think you exhibit you
in a kind of
no
well they're phrase the same situation is like okay
i guess i'm just enacted the same old story i don't have any choice as what it sounds like
and i can see why it's so debilitating because i find it that way myself
ah
how do you find the space for a different possibility in that moment
you know
is it really maybe that's the question is it really the same situation not to deny that it's the same situation not to say oh it's a different situation say is it really
there are similarities
that's right
that's right
and you said
i mean it's not like dropping away like once and for all is it
i don't know but i think of it as letting things come to rest
you know they may not disappear in front of your face but they can come to rest
how we doing on time larry
okay so okay one more hacking
go ahead
yeah yeah thanks for talk and love the idea of the spontaneity of as you still ceremony
while back about this term pharmacopoeia they fuck really jarring is a kind of implies competition violence who's going away similar wounds and
the question is how do you incorporate that competitive competitive or workmanship
well i think it gets in the way
because i think what's happening is that we are meeting somebody
where do you create the space to actually meet somebody now can be that that kind of energized
an intensive
interaction i'm not trying to say that intensity is out of place
the question is more fundamentally how will you meet somebody in with it he presented that way
ah well at meeting take place
who that person match your intensity or not
ah if you feel very strongly about something there is always a way to meet him
i don't know what the path is
but it's the style of interaction may not be the key here the question is your intention
ha
thanks very much i really appreciate all of your questions