So, I don't think that's a useful way of doing it, of thinking about it. I think that, for instance, if you come in and slam the door, you know, somebody might wake up. Would that be so bad? But when we follow this form, we learn something about who we are. because nothing ever works the way we think it's going to work. And something unexpected nearly always happens. And that allows us to see what we were thinking, what we were doing in that moment, how were we with the space we were in. So, every time we come in enter the space, we're taking care of the practice. Is there anyone here who's here for the first time ever?

[01:01]

So I want to thank you for supporting and taking care of our practice as you came in the space with us. Thank you. Now, usually You know, we come and we have some idea of what we're going to do here, and it's usually not so troublesome. We kind of think we're coming to do Zazen, and we kind of work with that, and we sit down and just try to let go of those things, because that's how we practice together here. I find on the occasions when, so when I come in the door, I'm not usually so agitated. Sometimes there might be something going on before I get here that has got me going, but usually I'm fairly calm, especially in the morning. On the occasions when I come in this door, I've got a full steam ahead of, as I am today, a torrent of thinking.

[02:15]

And I've made a pretty good effort to be present in my body, and so I don't mind it so much. But it's a kind of, you know, I have a sort of theme that I want to talk about, and yet The closer I get to this cushion, the more I want to connect the dots. And I mean all the dots. So the whole project becomes completely unmanageable. And so I'm just going to do the best I can here. But taking care of our practice in this way brings us into a kind of relationship with our surroundings, a very dynamic relationship, as I've been alluding to. And to nurture this relationship, we need to kind of stay connected with what's alive in us.

[03:21]

So the kind of metaphor I'm bringing up about taking care of our space is, you know, often sometimes expressed as, we take care of the earth and the earth produces food. It supports us. And we take care of our body in the way we move in here, in a way that supports other people, we find some kind of internal balance. And, you know, balance is a kind of function which is sort of inherent in the body, but it's also enhanced, supported by your sense of connection with your surroundings as you move through space. If your vision is very narrow and your peripheral sense is not so present, in fact, your balance is affected. This is something that tightrope walkers know about, that having a sense of the body in space

[04:37]

creates a more stable balance. Think of, probably a lot of you have seen that movie Man on Wire. Think of that. So I've been, I was surprised today I think somewhere in the middle of the night, my mind started working too hard. And I got up and I put on, in the dark, put on my wife's slippers. Which, they don't fit on me, right? But I put them on anyway. And which is, it turns out, it's a real no-no because, you know, I have toenail fungus, blah, blah, blah, you know. And I started thinking, I don't know how I did that.

[05:43]

And then later, sitting Zazen, I suddenly realized, I've been listening to these thoughts. I've not actually been hearing the birds and the cars outside. And so I went back to my body as I know it through the auditory sphere. And, ah, what a relief. The same is true of vision, as I've just been alluding to. A sense of inclusion in actual your vision creates a difference in how you are. And the kinds of stuff that comes up, you know, especially when I'm sort of triggered by having done something untoward. You know, we all have these tapes we run. You know, am I good enough?

[06:45]

Am I doing the right thing? Do I deserve love? These are all questions which are often at the forefront of our minds, but have absolutely no answers. I mean, they may be useful information for a different kind of exploration to get to the bottom, but the way we're usually relating to them is that we just get confused. Ken, could you let me know when there's about 10 minutes left? I may run out of things to say before then, but we'll see. So, I wanted to bring up this theme of connectedness between the body and the environment as the sphere, one way of seeing the sphere of practice.

[07:55]

And I wanted to talk about the intimacy of that and how that intimacy can be nurtured by our understanding of Dharma. And in particular, I'd like to say something about the opening line of the Heart Sutra. It says something like this. Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of great compassion, fully engaged and immersed in the perfection of wisdom, sees clearly that what we believe to be real is insubstantial and fleeting, and thereby alleviates all suffering. Seeing clearly alleviates all suffering. Where does seeing clearly begin? and alleviation of suffering begin. I want to say that this is kind of a non-dual pair, in a certain way, that seeing clearly involves setting aside your stories, your evaluative thinking, just looking, as Yoga Bearer said,

[09:18]

Yogi Berra said, we think, you can observe a lot just by looking. And that's what I'm talking about here, just looking. And looking clearly without allowing yourself the space to see clearly and letting your other considerations just be sitting here for the time being. So when we see someone clearly, it makes it possible to be able to actually meet that person.

[10:30]

One of the things that... It's kind of like... Can I, you know, sometimes I think when I read the koans, they refer to the clear-eyed monks. And you may think that you can't really see clearly, but you can. And you can just keep doing it, because it changes. The thing about the Prajnaparamita Sutra, the Heart Sutra, is that it ends with a mantra about going beyond. And going beyond is what we do when we're looking clearly, when we're seeing clearly. We're not stopping at the first thing we see. We just keep on looking, observing. And it's actually very hard to do.

[11:36]

And yet, the thing that we sometimes The reason why it works is because of impermanence. We sometimes say that impermanence is what drives suffering because we resist change. But impermanence also drives awakening because we choose to keep our attention free of our distractions. And when we do that, when we see the real person in front of us, Or we see, there's this great moment in Ed Brown's movie, is it called Cooking Your Life? When he's observing these teapots, and he talks about how much it means to him, how, you know, it's very touching, these battered teapots that have been serving us for so long.

[12:42]

Anyway, you don't see those things unless you open your eyes and your ears. And so I think that's what the Heart Sutra is pointing to. That seeing clearly evokes compassion. And compassion opens the door to clear-sightedness. In other words, to see clearly requires compassion to be present so that we can accept the situation exactly as it is, no caveats. Under those circumstances, then a response comes forth. a response that is also reflected in that, reflects that clarity.

[13:50]

It's like wisdom and compassion is hand in glove, not knowing which is which. Sometimes when we talk about, you know, the mind is always setting things up in dualities, juxtapositions, And, you know, wisdom and compassion are sometimes, we set those up in juxtaposition. Emptiness and form, wisdom and compassion. And I want to talk about that a little bit in relationship to the concept of the middle way. So, in a way, we sometimes think of, you know, as this sort of broad highway, the Dharma superhighway, big, accommodates everyone, all paths. So it's a little bit like, maybe it's in here somewhere. I want to say that maybe it's in here somewhere, that it's actually very precise.

[14:58]

And it's very precise because it's manifest here, on the Earth you're standing on. So, there are lots of great Zen stories which touch on these issues. What I was talking about at first having to do with the intimacy with your surroundings and the space you occupy and take care of. I'm not going to get into this now, but one of the dots that's out there. is something to do with, somehow I think this is related to the question that comes up in the Zen literature about inanimate objects preaching the Dharma.

[16:08]

So, that's a little related to who's preaching the Dharma here, myself or you? We don't know, but anyway, I like that a lot, that question. And there's a story where Yun Yan, who is the teacher of Dengxian, one of the progenitors of our way, He says to his friend Da Wu, he says, What does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion do with all those hands and eyes? And Da Wu says, Well, it's just like reaching behind you in the middle of the night to find your pillow.

[17:16]

The hand with an eye in it does not think about what to do. And the body knows where the pillow is without deliberating. If you've seen those pictures of the statues of Avalokiteshvara with the thousand-armed version, I don't know what temples they're in in Japan, but they do exist. I've seen these photos. And every hand has an eye, and it also has an implement, some kind of skillful means. And so, the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion just meets the world ready, without thinking, to offer an appropriate response.

[18:23]

So that's, I feel, in the spirit of going beyond what you can conceive of. That's where an appropriate response arises from. is going beyond what you can figure out. How much more time do we have? Oh my goodness. I should have connected more dots. So, as Sojourner Roshi says again and again, our practice manifests as opening continually to this next moment, however you take it in, by whatever faculty you take it in, and

[20:01]

than this next moment. And sometimes we say that means going beyond, continually going beyond, and sometimes we say that means taking refuge in seeing, hearing clearly with an open heart. So, I'm going to stop, actually. Would you like to say something about inanimate objects breaching the Dharma? You've been doing it. You're calling him an inanimate object? Well, we don't know. between animate and inanimate, even though there is animate and inanimate.

[21:33]

Ross. Thank you, Peter. I was touched by your touching me from a talk I gave a while ago around handling the door and another way of looking at it, an inadvertent door slam and actually waking everybody up and how that actually is a great teaching. So, but we still, we don't, we don't encourage people to slam doors. We don't encourage people to get angry, but these, Well, we do our practices as we've agreed to do them because they support, we find a way to work together, to practice together in a way that supports our investigation into this moment.

[23:18]

And when something unusual happens, we're all involved in a shift in learning from that situation. So we're all involved in that together. And so that's how we stay balanced, is we stay together through each change that occurs. how we handle things or how we communicate. I'm reading Crooked Cucumber again. Oh, so am I. So is the time when this young man other people.

[24:30]

And he's complaining, complaining about this country and at a certain point Suzuki Roshi runs up to him and slaps him hard, rapid fire, five times. And the guy is humbled and he doesn't show up again. and said, you know, I miss you taking stuff out of my refrigerator. Why don't you go on back? And he came on back. But he was not the complainer anymore. What's that bring up for you? Well, it's a shock the hell out of everybody. Yeah, I think slapping people can be a good thing. It happens.

[25:33]

What to say about it? Maybe there's nothing to say about it, but to simply take it in and see where it moves you. It could go a lot of different places. Walter. Peter, when you're Seeing clearly, what do you always see? What do you what? Always see. Always see. Always seek? See. See. What do you always see? When you're seeing clearly. There's nothing you will always see. You just see. And there'll be something there. Not knowing. You may not know what it is. When we find that, you know, when we're in that moment where we realize, oh, I was just floating away, I was just not mindful, is it always egocentric?

[26:47]

Have we gone off our Buddha-centric mind and it's egocentric? Because I think there's ego in that fungus. Well, yeah. I wouldn't say we've gone off our Buddhist-centric mind. Maybe we don't, we're not aware, it's kind of like, what mind? When we're doing something which we might call distracted or small-minded or selfish or, I don't know, whatever characterization, whatever label we want to put on it, something we wish we had chosen not to do.

[27:50]

We did that for a reason. So it's information that you did something you didn't understand. And so maybe it's a kind of gift. Like for me it turned out to be a kind of gift that I didn't understand this because I understood something more important later. So I don't know what to say about that. I like that answer. Yeah, it doesn't have to, enlightenment doesn't have to be right now. Sue. Thank you, Peter. Thank you. I appreciate this talk and you talked, you mentioned taking care of our practice. So, how did you take care of it today?

[28:56]

I sat down Well, at what point, are you asking? Pick a point. I was sitting in Zazen in the period before this lecture, and my mind was going a mile a minute. And it's because the talk had already started, you know, except it wasn't being spoken yet. And I kept coming back to the birds. And I kept coming back to what was right in front of me. And then I felt like I didn't have to push away the thoughts necessarily or get lost in them. I had some choice. Do you have, when I take care of things, when I feel responsible for things, I have lists and ideas about what that looks like and thoughts about how this would be really nice if we all did blah blah blah or paid more attention to this or that.

[30:16]

Do you have any suggestions? That was sort of a big question. A big part of it, I'm sorry. What I was thinking about was, when you're making that list, are you taking care of your practice in that moment? How can I do other than that? Oh, you want to do something other than that? No. Oh, okay. Nothing else to do. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I think the problems come when there's a separation of taking care of myself and taking care of my practice. Because it seems to me when I see you in the kitchen You do what's in front of you.

[31:28]

It's very nice. Thank you. But I often get lost when I'm walking down the street. Alan? Well, it occurs to me, thinking about your exchange with Ross and also just now with Sue, that we do have lists. renewal, which is perhaps drifted away.

[32:52]

When you noticed that you were perseverating about your toe fungus, you also realized, you recollected, wait, there's birds and there's traffic. So this is available to all of us. At any time. Yeah, all the time. It's there. Well, I was thinking about thinking and we seem to have a, I don't know, I don't find it very clear what we teach or try to understand about thinking. Like you talked about the reaching for the pillow without thinking. That's a very powerful image, you know, in the stories. And you talk about opening the senses as a really good means to come into the present.

[34:29]

You know, we'll sort of vilify thinking, and then if I ask a question like this, which people remind me I always ask the same question for the last four years. Then somebody will say, well, thinking is useful. You know, in the Asian psychology systems, including in the Heart Sutra, the mind is, we're said to have six senses, including the mind. What the hell? You know, the mind is a sense organ. So where does thinking come in? And why is it always an obstacle rather than a means to liberation, just like hearing and stuff? Just like hearing, it's an obstacle and a means to liberation. Hearing an obstacle?

[35:30]

Well, let's put it this way. The mind gives us the capacity to create obstacles as well as to liberate ourselves. Is the mind different from other senses in that regard? That's a good question. Thank you. We'll work on that. Jake. Thank you, Peter, for your talk. One of the things that came to me while you were speaking was, on the one hand, to be compassionate Often, when I'm receiving compassion from someone else, the issue is that I'm, as the recipient of that compassion, not aware maybe that it's a compassionate response being given to me, in that I'm not connected to my body, the bird singing.

[36:45]

Because to me, the earth is compassionate. People can be compassionate. I lose sight of that, and that impermanence informs how it's always changing, what is a compassionate response at any one time, and that also I'm unaware that I'm receiving compassion sometimes until after the fact. Until after? Until after. Not at the moment. Let's say some other moment. It may come to me. Yeah. Oh, that was a compassionate act. How's that? How's that when that occurs to you? Yeah, how is that when that occurs to you? It's one of those ahas of, oh yeah, I wasn't really present for that person responding.

[37:52]

Pay attention to that. Is it time? More or less, one more. Peter, I am so delighted and that you became a priest. And in the time we were out on the patio having tea, you said something that really touched me at such a profound level. And it was your commitment about being a priest. And I wanted to ask you if you remember what you said. No, I don't. You don't? I was hoping you did. It was something so beautiful. It was... Sounds nice. It was about your commitment to awaken with everyone. Do you remember how you put it? No. But I like it. I'll think about it. It was so lovely and it touched me really deeply that you became a priest and that you have the great wish to help everyone awaken.

[38:54]

So thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I think we're done. Except for Linda, but we're never done.

[39:03]

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