Good morning. I'm surprised to see so many people come out on a wet day. Must have been for this particular guest we have with us today. Oh, some of you have not been here before. How many have never been here before? Well, not very many. Well, this is the first Sunday of the month, and this is Children's Sunday. So that's why these kids in the first row are here to see a special guest today. If you'll come out. Slick, come on out. Come on. Come on, Slick. It's okay. Oh, hi. Gosh, a lot of kids here. My name is Slick. That's

[01:14]

because I move kind of slow and Slick-like. Yeah. What's your name? Benjamin. Hi. Well, what should I tell you about me? Well, one thing I can tell you is wherever I go, I take my house with me. Can you do that? No, I don't think so. But I go and take my house with me. So wherever I am, I am at home. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. Okay. Yes, it's all right.

[02:14]

Hi there. Well, another thing about my kind of life is that I move kind of slow. In fact, I started to come here yesterday morning. By last night, I was already halfway. That's pretty good. Well, hi there. Hi, Benjamin. Also, I move very, very mindfully. Hi. What's your name? Guy. You're a guy. I think I'm a guy too. Not sure. I guess it really doesn't

[03:35]

matter too much for me. We sing a lot of songs. For example, we were snailing along by Moonlight Bay. You know that song? Or how about this one? Snail, snail, the gang's all here. You're not laughing. So you guys are going to have a good morning, right? Very slow and mindful. Slow moving. Not fast like this guy. This guy. He moves very, very fast. Too fast. Yesterday, he was only your age. And today, look at him. How did that happen? Yeah. It ain't no joke, son. Well, maybe it is. Are

[04:40]

you almost ready to go outside? You want to go out and play? You might find my friends down in the garden. But, but don't tell the gardener. And as for the rest of you, just don't say escargot. Hi, Livvy. You want to say hi to me? Anybody else want a little feel here? Well, maybe it's time to get on with the serious business of the Dharma. The Dharma. Okay, have I said enough? I hope so because this guy's run out of

[05:58]

words. I'm going to say goodbye now. Bye. [...] Help me here. I am. I am. Goodbye, Slick. Oh, God. In his house. You take a long nap now. He's tired. I'll put Slick here. Okay. Bye. Bye, guys. Nice seeing you. I'm very impressed how many people came this morning with all the rain. Did you

[07:00]

come by canoe? Kayak? Yeah, he's moving just like Slick. Today is also, actually, this evening will be the beginning of what is called the early Rohatsu Seishin. Seven days of slow dying and rebirth and dying again and being reborn again. For seven days, how many people in the practice period are here? Okay. All these folks that have their hands up will be sitting with us all together in here for the next seven days. A week from today, it'll be

[08:04]

almost over. But now it hasn't even started. And Seishin, one of the translations for Seishin means time to gather the mind. Time to focus our attention and do nothing but sit with ourselves from early morning till late at night with each other. And then, of course, there's also Dharma discussions. There's talks by the leader of the Seishin, who will be our abbess, Venerable Kuts. And there will be also an opportunity for the people in the Seishin to have a Dharma discussion with some of the practice leaders. But otherwise, we will be sitting here in silence and through our meals and doing our services and starting about five in the morning and going on till nine at night. And the Rohatsu Seishin is practiced in all the Zen monasteries around

[09:12]

the world as a time of Buddha's enlightenment. The Shakyamuni Buddha's awakening to his truth, which we try to practice here in other places. Tasting the truth of the Tathagata's words, tasting the truth of the Tathagata, the thus come one. I want to talk about that a little bit today. Of course, we don't really know. I mean, the whole myth, the whole story, the legend and so on of Buddha's enlightenment, we don't really know when that took place. Probably in the springtime. And his birth is also celebrated in the spring. But it probably has something to do with the calendar, I think. You know, the autumn, the vernal equinox, when the light becomes in the northern hemisphere, overcomes the dark time of new growth and so on. That's the resurrection in Christianity

[10:14]

and also Buddha's birthday time. And of course, this time of year when the dark force becomes the strongest and then the light begins to return. Enlightenment begins to return, the light begins to come back. It seems in the northern hemisphere at least a fitting time to practice this question of waking up to the light, to taste the truth of our life. So, in view of this, I just want to take the opportunity to go over or repeat or talk about the story of Shakyamuni leaving and the night of his enlightenment and how that is our story. I think most of you know the story, but if you will indulge me, I'll try to tell it again. Somebody, in some ways all of us, but at least archetypically, is born with a golden spoon in his

[11:24]

mouth or her mouth. All the advantages of life are presented to this person. That is to say, everything that the world can offer in terms of luxury, in terms of leisure, in terms of education, in terms of health, all those things that we think are very precious to us and make life worth living. This is the story of somebody who has all of that given to him and who even at an early age begins to find a certain dissatisfaction in it. There's the story that we read in some of the legends or some of the writings about Shakyamuni Buddha of his sitting under the rose apple tree as a boy at the time when the harvest is about to begin. It was a big festival and celebration in India in which the king of the Shakya clan, his particular clan, his father, along with probably his minister or chamberlain or

[12:25]

somebody, does the first furlong of plowing, the first row of plowing. So it's a big time and a lot of celebration is going on, a lot of dancing and music and the kind of things we associate with festivals. According to the story, it's hot. People are sweating under the sun and it's colorful and Shakyamuni is with his cousins enjoying it, but at some point he goes off by himself to get away from the den of the celebrants and sits down under this tree and his father begins to push the plow and turn up the earth. According to the story, the boy notices this, watches very carefully as the earth gets rent by the plow and worms and other creatures, snails maybe, are turned up under the plow and cut to pieces. Birds fly down from the sky and grab parts of the struggling life forms that are

[13:28]

being turned up by the plow in the earth and not only that, but a hawk or some bird of prey comes down and grabs its talons, one of the younger birds, and flies off with it. And this is very disturbing to the young boy. There comes that point, I think, in all of our lives when we begin to witness that life feeds on life. We might have seen it in movies if we haven't witnessed it in our own life, but at some point there's something kind of disturbing about that realization. He's about eight years old maybe. He sits in a kind of absorption of this scene under this tree and at the same time he feels a kind of relief, release from all the noise about him, the scene about him. And then his mother comes, his stepmother, Kotami, and he says to her, oh mother,

[14:28]

you see the priests, the Dharma, the Brahmin priests, of course, are the ones who are reciting the Vedas, calling upon propitiating the forces of nature and so on to bring good harvest and etc. But he says to his mother, look, even the Vedas, the scriptures, did not save those creatures. What is the use of all of that? So already the seeds of dissatisfaction with his life are manifested. It's probably that point in our own life when we want to run away from everything, from school, from home, from be by ourselves. At any rate, early on, of course, as we know from the legend, there had been a prophecy that he would grow up to be either a great king or a great teacher and his father wants to keep him in seclusion so that he can grow up and become

[15:33]

a great king in his father's footsteps. In other words, be involved in politics, in the running of the state, of the Shakya clan. And so, of course, he has to participate in debates and philosophy and learning and according to the story, he's best in everything. He's the champ. He gets straight A's. He hits a perfect batting average. He can't do anything wrong, but he's dissatisfied. So they finally decided, well, maybe he's getting, you know, he's post, now maybe he's after 12 years old and so on. He's beginning to, you know, having some problems that we call those that arise with us during puberty, glandular things, sex. Maybe it's time for him to get married, you know, settle down then. So, of course, he has an arranged marriage and it's a very beautiful young woman and so on. And there's a long story about how they meet, very charming stories about all of this. Let me make a long story short. He marries this young woman who's very much aware of the suffering

[16:40]

in the world and treats the sick and the homeless, the maimed and the halt and meditates herself and they have a very compatible arrangement. And she, Yashodara is her name, she understands her husband's longing to understand the truth which he cannot find with the Brahmin teachers. And so at some point, according to the teachings, the young man realizes by seeing a dead body, by seeing someone leprous, and by seeing a monk walking amidst the peoples of the town, images that also begin to disturb him. No matter how much we can enjoy our life, sickness, old age and death are down the road.

[17:42]

There's no escape for any being whatsoever. And I can't find any satisfaction to the question of how to deal with that in my life, he thinks, right? So one night there's a great party, this is one of the stories anyway, and during the great party his wife sets out on the chair, she knows that this is the night he will slip away, he's now in his 20s. Oh and they've had a sexual intercourse, Rahula, beautiful boy, a child. Now what's interesting about this story is that she knows he's going to leave and she lays out all of his traveling clothes for him, and then slips away into her chambers and acts as if she's asleep. And she even calls upon his personal servant, what's his name? Remember? Channa, yeah, Channa. She says, get his horse ready,

[18:46]

I think tonight he's going to leave, but don't let anybody else know about this. This is an interesting part of the story for me because, you know, usually we want the daddies to stay home. Home leaving is an interesting question. Let's stop right here and look at this for a moment. If one is obligated to raise a family, if one gets married, if one joins the forces of life in the world, then one is bound to worry and have cares. I mean who wouldn't be fearful for their possessions, for their home, for their families in times of unrest and distress, which was of course the case in India then as it is now in the world. Attachment to and protection for those things that we hold dear to us. So there's already,

[19:48]

of course, in place a tradition of people called home leavers, those who chose a life aside and away from the cares of the world, to leave behind all of that protection in order to fathom the greater questions and truth of life, to face the unknown, the wandering monk, the forced hermit. There's a whole tradition for this in which at some point all people could do this after their social responsibilities were finished. In fact, his father had said to him, someday Siddhartha, when your family's grown and you have fulfilled your duties as a minister of state and so on, you can don the robe of a wandering monk, ascetic, and go off into the world as others do. But he thought by that time I'm going to be too old and weak and this is going to take all of my energy. Anyway, he leaves, right? He mounts his horse and

[20:58]

off he goes. And of course there's lamentation and despair and unhappiness when the king finds out about this. And first he just wanders about and doesn't quite know how to handle his life, cuts off his hair, gives up his sword, changes his raiment for a beggar's clothes that he meets, and eventually bumps into somebody who says, there are these teachers who will teach you through concentration practices to overcome the mind, to overcome the world. So he goes off to meet these teachers. First teacher he meets will teach him concentration practices. The first teacher is called Alara Kalama. He's an old guy who's been around a long time. He has 500 or 600 followers. He says, I can teach you concentration practices in which

[22:01]

the mind and the objects of mind become one. The objects of perception and the subject of perception become one. I can teach you these things and you will find the truth. You will find release from suffering. You will find rapture. You will find bliss. You will find happiness, the happiness you crave. And because he's our hero, he's able to accomplish this in a rather short time. A few months, all the practices that have taken the other's years to accomplish, he does rather quickly. But no matter what state of mind, that is to say how deep his absorption into what is called samadhi concentration is, he is still not satisfied. Because eventually he has to come back into this dimension which we call the world and function. So he goes to his teacher and he tells his teacher, although I appreciate very much what you have taught me, these absorption practices, these samadhi practices, these jhanas, I'm still not satisfied. And he leaves with the

[23:11]

teacher who wanted him to stay and run the sangha with him. You're so good that you can be my right hand person. In fact, when I die, I just transmit my leadership to you that Siddhartha says now. He goes on to another teacher who says, who claims Ramaputra is his name. I love that name. I love his name, Ramaputra. Udaka Ramaputra. He goes to Adama Ramaputra and says, tells him what he has learned. And Ramaputra in essence tells him, well you know that you can absorb yourself into different samadhi states, but I'm going to teach you the fact that all perception is nothing but your own mind. There is no world but your own mind. I'm going to teach you that. And that would be called the perception, the overcoming of perception and non-perception, the non-duality of those two things. That all phenomena is nothing but the object of mind. And he accomplishes this

[24:15]

in a couple of months. He's still not satisfied. It still doesn't work for him. There's still dissatisfaction. I hope this isn't discouraging you people who are going to sit all week and do these absorption practices. But there's something a little different you see. There are many teachers in the world, Indian even today, who teach the rapture and bliss of their total absorption and of non-duality. In fact it's called Siddha Yoga. You walk into a room with that kind of teacher, you can go to India and find them today, and it's like getting turned on with about a hundred thousand jolts of some kind of juice. Zoom. And you kind of light up and you feel the oneness of God. Bhakti, devotion to God, devotion to the guru. But eventually you're not going to be with the guru and eventually you're going to come down from all of that. It's all still impermanent. So he decides he'll go off by himself and teach himself now. And of

[25:17]

course this is the period where he decides, I think I will give up. What will I really do is starve the body. Since all of this comes back to the central aspects of being. Sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and so on. What I will do is deny the world in those terms. And so of course he does the ascetic practice. Starving himself. His hair grows long and matted. He never washes. He eats dung or one seed a day. He's a mess. If you saw him on the street you would have heard around him probably holding your nose. And of course he meets four or five other ascetics who are all practicing the same thing with him. Feeling that by denying themselves, by denying their comfort of the world, by totally denying the world, even to the point of death, there was already a tradition for this too, that he would finally reach the truth. But guess what, you know? At some point he finally, according to one of the traditions,

[26:17]

walks into the water, the river, and feels the wonderful warmth and power of the water. But as he tries to climb out he's too weak and he falls down. And at that moment the Bodhisattva appears. At that moment the savior appears. A woman, a young woman, a goatherd carrying some goat's milk, I think it is, some millet or something like that, in a bowl, sees him and feeds him. In other words, something always comes along at the right moment if we practice and feeds us. He has a little strength and crawls out and understands that asceticism, this kind of extreme asceticism, is not the answer either. He had heard somewhere, in fact in the Vedas they say it, that if you want to play the instrument perfectly you don't tune the strings too tight or too loose, just so. So it makes a perfect sound,

[27:24]

attunement in other words. How to attune with the world. That now becomes his practice, how to attune with the world, and he decides he'll go off and sit under that tree over there until he understands. And so this of course becomes the Bodhi tree or the tree under which the enlightenment occurs. Now it's interesting, isn't it? A tree always takes, there's always a symbol of a tree in these stories. A tree grows out of the roots of the earth and reaches toward heaven. The sheltering tree, the sheltering palms, the tree of life, it's always a symbol of earthiness and lifting its arms toward heaven. But also of course the tree is part of the vegetation that gives off oxygen for us and helps us stay in life. Anyway, he sits under this tree for seven days and seven nights, at least for a long time. And on the last night he sits there,

[28:28]

he goes through all these trance states again and comes back down from them and so on. But a number of things occur to him. One is that all things, no matter what he looks for, there's no permanence in anything. No permanence in a mind state, no permanence in anything in the material world that can be pointed to, that can be grasped, that can be held on to. None whatsoever. Furthermore, he can't find what we call the self anywhere. This was a departure from the Indian tradition in which the Atman was an ongoing ontological or being presence of the eternal Brahman. And he couldn't even find that for sure. All he could find was that there was something called form and a reaction to form, which is feelings of some sort. Thought processes around those feelings. I like it, I don't like it, I don't know if I like it or not. And then the stories that we make up

[29:30]

around those and consciousness. Eye consciousness, nose consciousness, ear consciousness, the stories we make up around that. But the stories themselves have no substance, they're just stories. So at the last night he's sitting under the tree according to this and in the first watch of the night he goes into deep absorption and he understands something that I call, I've always been here. That I've always been here is something that you can, a little test that you can do with yourself. Ask yourself the question, can you remember a time? There's two parts to this question. One, can you remember a time when you were not here? Whether you're two years old or 102 years old, can you ever remember a time that you were not here? Of course you can look around and see that everything is changing, but that's an object of your consciousness from the point of view of consciousness itself. Even if you go back through the womb as he did, even if you go back and back and back as he did through lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, there was always

[30:35]

somebody here experiencing something called here. I am always here, but second part of it, I can't find the I and I cannot find the here, yet here I am, here it is. That is the tathagata, the thus come one, the thus come thing, this, just now, this. But I can't find a self in that, yet, like you and me, when I was five, when I was three, when I was 23, when I was 60, at this moment that separate self sense, that separate, that feeling of, what should I say, particularity, that uniqueness, doesn't seem to be different. Everything else around it seems to be different, but that ever-witnessing consciousness does not seem to have changed. So he goes back through lifetime after lifetime and sees that

[31:46]

he's been reborn again and again, what he calls he or I has been reborn again and again, and of course when he was born, according to the legend, he came out immaculately, perfect, we could already walk when he was born and took seven steps, remember that part? Takes seven steps, points to the heaven and points to the earth, says, below the heavens and above the earth, I alone in the world honored one. Now I used to think that was a pretty, a pretty egotistical thing to say, I, just me, I'm the world, but that's not what he meant. I alone, each of us is alone, even though everything is interdependent, feeding everything else, everything bound to every other thing in the universe, yet it is experienced as unique and separate. I alone, you alone are the world honored one. Another way of looking at that in words is that the whole universe, what we call the whole universe, who knows what the whole

[32:50]

universe is, but let's just, for the sake of argument, say we do, comes forward to experience itself as you and me, as our consciousness, as this consciousness here. That seems simple enough to understand. You alone in the world honored one, there'll never be another Nick, another Arlene, another Fu, another me, another you, just as we're at this moment. Nobody can experience exactly what you are experiencing or know what you're experiencing exactly. And that's interesting, that's the particularity of it. So there's two things we're looking at here in enlightenment, so-called enlightenment. One is that all things are universal, they have no self that we can get hold of, and yet at the same time there is the world honored one, which is always this, this, and this. And he begins to celebrate that. In the second part of the night, he understands that there's a

[33:57]

chain of causation, that because we feel that we are separate from everything else, we have the illusion that we can, that there's something called an ego that exists separately and can control things over and apart from everything else. I know this is old hat for you, I'm saying this for me. I need to tell this story for me so I can begin to practice it maybe this week a little bit. So he sees that there's a chain of causation. In brief it goes something like this. It's that, yes, I think there's a separate self. The separate self has sense organs. I can feel a sense of touch or contact with the world through my senses. Through that contact I grasp at some aspects of it and I push other aspects away thinking there's an I doing this. And I begin to build up a story around the things I like, the things I dislike, what is right, what is wrong. In other words, I split the world down the middle. I believe in the language and the acculturation.

[34:59]

I'm an American, I'm a male, I'm an Aquarian, I'm a Schizophrenic, I'm a this, I'm a that. I'm a Buddhist. And I begin to take, reify those and take those as something real. And he says, well, that's the grasping aspect of it, isn't it? Not only do I grasp onto certain aspects of it, I begin to cling to certain things and make up stories around that even unconsciously. And out of that is what's called becoming. Born again. I go through a series of changes. I suddenly let everything go. Something comes along and grabs me again. Boom, I'm born. Birth and death from moment to moment. Because this happens rapidly and fast, we have a sense of continual being as me, a separate entity, story that has some substance to it. And that the language in which I am putting this into has some kind of substance to it, rather than just

[36:02]

something that we have invented over time. You follow? Now, during the night there's this big storm. I like this part of it. We had a big storm last night. That's what made me think of this today. During the night we had this, I thought last night about this midnight, what the devil am I going to talk about tomorrow? Then there was a storm. And there was a storm in the light of Buddha's enlightenment. During the storm, of course, everything is, the wind blows and the lightning, the wind howls and the lightning flashes and he doesn't move. He sits upright, unmoving, in the midst of all of this. Kind of metaphor for sitting upright in the midst of all of this swarm of quantum swarm around us in our life. Doesn't move and watches all of this happening coming. Sees that everything is dependent on everything else, understands the uniqueness of everything at the same time. The storm goes away, the clouds break apart and he looks up.

[37:05]

And what does he see? He sees the morning star. I love that. Venus, right? The morning star, you know, in the old traditions, Venus, beautiful, it's a harbinger bringing the lantern, announcing the coming day. That beautiful star, he sees that, that is the suchness, that is the Tathagata, the thus come one, right there he awakens. Just this moment, the particularity of this moment that will never be the same again, is the awakening mind. Totally opens, totally opens to all of that. That's the first part of it. First part is he sees the emptiness, what we call the emptiness of all things, you can't get hold of anything. Then he sees the suchness, the particularity of everything. And the third part of this is, I'm going to tell somebody about it. There's the philosophical, psychological aspect of it. There is the affective or feeling aspect

[38:08]

of it. And then there's the need to come back into the world itself, the way things are. And share this understanding with the rest of the world. But at first he's so kind of, what should I say, happy. And everything is so, everything is so free, everything is so unobstructed, everything is so joyous, everything is so shining, that he feels there's no way I can tell, there's no way I can describe this to anybody. So for about a week he just wanders about or sits under the street, just kind of savoring all of this before he starts his teaching. Now then, this is when we come to Zen. It's easy to be philosophical about our life, it's easy to understand dependent co-arising, it's easy to understand impermanence as mindsets and so on. What's hard to understand is that this moment, I think what Zen did, what Zen does,

[39:16]

and it's particularly pointed out in poetry, Zen poetry, the Chinese mind and the Japanese mind, grasping, grabbing hold of a moment, getting it down so that we can see that the universal and the particular come together, boom, in this moment. Basho, you know Basho, famous Japanese haiku writer, writes, this road, down it no one comes this autumn night. This road, actually, kono michi ya, just this road, boom, exclamation, ya, no one comes this autumn eve. Now a lot of people can philosophize about, well that's, he's talking about, you know, he's all alone as a poet in the world and his students aren't following him and so on, but no, no, the Zen aspect of that, the awakening aspect is that moment of looking out,

[40:18]

haven't you had this moment in your life? You've seen the suchness of something, you've opened the blind, a drop of rain falls, boom, plop, right in front of you. It's just that drop of rain, just that road, at this moment, no one comes. He feels the particularity, the loneliness. You know, Zen Buddhism, at least, is not about being always happy or unlonely, it's also feeling the other side, the loneliness of our feeling of separate existence and appreciating that, just such, that the Tathagata just comes that way. Now this, now this storm, now these calms, now these arid days, now this terror, now this freedom, now this boredom, but usually in objects themselves with close observation and this takes some practice. Not so long ago, I came out of an operation from heart surgery and I

[41:19]

had to stay a lot of down, I had to walk a little bit, but I sat most of the day in my house looking through an open window and watching the light change on the hillside. One of the wonderful things about recovering is you have the leisure to just sit and you don't have to sit in a particular way, nobody's watching, you're not sitting in Zazen necessarily, but it is Zazen, you're sitting there, I was sitting there, looking out the window, watching the light change on the hillside. A bird would land, just that bird, doing just this thing with that grass, my mind, that bird, this grass, that moment, total appreciation. Not only that, but I was happy to be alive. The rest of the world hadn't impinged yet, I hadn't gotten back into the swirl, I could enjoy that moment in its totality, I could understand what they're talking about, the freedom of that. Isa, famous Japanese, says, it is a world of dew, dew, d-e-w, it is a world of dew,

[42:24]

meaning it's impermanent, and then he adds in the sentence, and yet, and yet, although it's all impermanent, when you lose somebody you love, you're going to shed tears, although there's nothing to cling to, you're going to feel the world and all of its impermanence profoundly, deeply, and the more we practice with emptiness, if we want to call it that, or form as emptiness, and emptiness as form, the more we deeply feel our gain and loss, and appreciate it, and let it go, let it be, that's a tagata, that thus come one. When finally, I got a little note here, there's a monk, I like this one, comes and says to his teacher, the body of color perishes, what is the fixed body of the Dharma? The body of color perishes, what is the fixed body of the Dharma?

[43:27]

The teacher says, the mountain flowers bloom like brocade, the river between the hills is blue as indigo. Remember that moment when you were a kid, and you looked outside, came out of the school building or something, springtime, I know in Tassajara, I had this experience in the wintertime, you folks that have been to Tassajara will appreciate this, it's four o'clock in the morning, you get up there, you know, and you're sitting about six hours in the darkness or more, around ten o'clock in the morning, finally the sun begins to peek through the trees in the east, and the rays of the sun would come down and land just outside the door on what we call the Angawa, or the deck, right outside the door of the Zindo, and as I came out from sitting all those hours and listening to a talk, probably as long as this one, I put my foot, stepped down, reached and felt the warm, where the sun had fallen on the cold boards, the warmth of that, at that moment my foot, oh, how good that felt, just that foot

[44:32]

landing, coming down on that board at that moment, that was the Tathagatagarbha, oh, such appreciation, such joy, such happiness, and then of course the next step is gone. Now if we could live our life in that kind of continuum, just, now this, now this, yes, and begin to, without getting stuck, you see, zen kind of skids, oils the skids as it were, greases the skids so we can slide along from moment to moment. Brocade, you know how the flowers look like brocade on these hills pretty soon? Jumping clear of the many and the one since Dogon, but you know, although we all experience this, we had a ceremony the other night here, and I'm going to finish soon now, be patient with me, it's called Shosan, Shosan the teacher, in this case Linda Ruth Cutts sat there in a chair and all the monks line up, all of us line

[45:33]

up on both sides and we come forward with our hands like this and bow and ask a question. Someone said happiness has no history, so I was very happy to come forward and say, yay, or just this, or I'm happy. Most of us come forward and say, well, you know, I'm bored, or I can't find myself, or I'm suffering. Anyway, the litanies of suffering that we all experience when we express ourselves, the dissatisfaction that we feel in our life from moment to moment that we're in touch with, nothing wrong with this, but mostly we're in touch with the small mind, the small dissatisfied mind. We're not at ease, we want to leave home and get free, but we're not there yet, so we express that to the teacher, the teacher says something, good, go back and sit with that, maybe. So now we come to this session this week and we have a great opportunity, the whole world takes care of us, we can just sit here, somebody's going to feed

[46:36]

us, not to worry about making money, all we have to do is sit with ourselves and the whole universe. Just for the moment, just this. You know what? It hurts. It hurts to do nothing, to be everything, to be with everything, the particularity, the form, and the emptiness, to move between those realms without sticking, because we do stick. We'll begin to count the days, for only four more days and we'll be done. Notice the mind jumps forward, or do you remember last year, what a great session I had? I thought I was liberated, now I hate it. We really get in touch, you see, we finally sit down, you can really get in touch with how things are changing, and yet you can't, that change isn't separate from this unique particularity called me. I think we're learning how to fall in love with ourselves in the world.

[47:38]

And lastly, there is a wonderful poem by, I think it's a Rumi, but maybe not Rumi, anyway, somebody came out of Afghanistan, a yogi of the mystical tradition of the Sufis, he said, a cook, a pea tries to jump out of the pot, the cook knocks it back with the ladle, boom, that's the teacher saying, don't you try to jump out, teacher says, cook says, don't you try to jump out, you think I'm torturing you, but I'm just giving you flavor, so you mix with the rices and spice, and be the lovely vitality of a human being. Remember, when you drank rain in the garden, that was for this, when you drank rain in the garden, that was for this moment. Grace first, sexual pleasure, then a burning new life begins, and a friend has something good to

[48:48]

eat. We're all in that pot, and we're all feeding each other, we have something good to eat, to feed with, we're all feeding each other something good to eat, even if we don't like the taste of it, and even if we try to jump out of the pot. Okay, Slick, he's meditating.

[49:16]

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