as you all know, the day is the... Saying the word anniversary feels funny because it does not feel like an anniversary, but it's the 20th year after 9-11 and a chapter is just closed with the United States exiting. So I just wanted to read a brief paragraph from a two- or three-page statement that the Dalai Lama made right after the original 9-11 event and Here's something what he said We must continue to develop a wider perspective to think rationally and work to avert future disasters in a non-violent way These issues concern the whole of humanity not just one country We should explore the use of non-violence

[01:00]

as a long-term measure to control terrorism of every kind But we need a well-thought-out coordinated long-term strategy The proper way of resolving differences is through dialogue compromise and negotiations through human understanding and humility We need to appreciate that genuine peace comes about through mutual understanding respect and trust As I have already said human problems should be solved in a humanitarian way and non-violence is a humane approach In this context to punish an entire country For the misdeeds of an enemy who cannot be found may prove to be futile Dealing with such situations as we face now requires a broader perspective

[02:02]

On the one hand, we cannot simply identify a few individuals and put the entire blame on them But neither can we target an entire country For inevitably the innocent will suffer Just as I did in the USA on 11th September Basically he turned out to be right in my opinion Also just interesting I think many people can remember I'm assuming That many people can remember where they were were when they first learned about 9-11 as it was happening because it was such a incomprehensible Phenomena, we just had never seen anything like that and We didn't have any reference for that So, however we relate to that I just wanted to mention bring up 9-11 We're all involved in it some way

[03:05]

being in the bay area we're a little You know compared to some of the other countries we have it fairly easy in terms of things that we take for granted So What I wanted to talk about this morning was Is three different kinds of mind which are all interrelated And a key to zen practice Open mind Beginner's mind an ordinary mind They're all just different aspects of really the same Kind of awareness in my opinion So open mind is You know just a normal term that's not used in particularly in buddhism It's just an everyday term that americans use all the time. Hopefully I'm assuming

[04:11]

I would assume That most people feel they have an open mind well particularly in his end community, but I mean other than that I think most people like to think of themselves as being open-minded but my experience is with myself and with others is that In a gross way we are but in a subtle way. We're not We have our opinions and When we hear some opinion that runs contrary to ours or bothers us very difficult to be open-minded Um In a way our opinions and uh Our attitudes kind of protect us it gives us a sense of who we are And some security we know where we stand Being open to different points of view particularly when they're counter to what we really believe

[05:18]

Is pretty difficult Genuinely speaking to really be genuine with that is pretty difficult And utmost I think is it involves respect Whether you agree with somebody or not the respect for that person Uh Something came up on my screen. Hold on just a minute Whether you agree with that person or not, uh is that is respect for the person who has a different opinion than we do And an open mind can you know, mostly we talk about it in terms of relating to other people but even in nature Open mind is uh Possible or closed mind is possible We just came back from a vacation in mendocino And I love wide open spaces Uh in the mountains, but we couldn't go up there because it was so smoky. So we went on the coast

[06:22]

Up near fort bragg and mendocino And I don't particularly like the redwood forest. I feel kind of enclosed with them But we spent but that's what's happening up there along with the coast So when we were on in on a redwood walk day You know, I appreciated the mag the majesty of them, but at the same time You know, it wasn't my thing So now I could see my own closed attitude toward it. So I kept trying to appreciate just forget my attitude about it and uh Uh, just see it for what it was not compare it with something that I like better It kind of worked And uh, you can see this with um Even a response to covid for bzc, you know, there's a committee working on how to How to reopen bzc

[07:27]

It's difficult because there's so much data coming in and it changes And people have different opinions about it some pretty emotional So, how do you? Stay open to everybody's opinion And yet i'm trying to find the the best way That works for the most people Uh, it's a big responsibility. So I appreciate the leadership uh Dealing with that and I my experience is they definitely have an open mind about it uh And it's difficult. It's very difficult to get it to make everybody happy because people think differently But being open to the different opinions is really key And in zazen, uh open mind is just when we sit you know Everybody experiences going off on various stories the past the future Uh problems we've got, you know little fantasies. We've got we've all experienced that

[08:30]

And continue to experience it But just having an open mind uh You don't need to go into we don't need to go into our traumas We can just be there just right there And Just being there. It may not be as exciting or stimulating as a particular drama. I think that's the problem But being open to just being there sitting still uh When we you know, we like we have we're used to a level of stimulation So we don't have that unless we start thinking and thinking and thinking So I think that's a part of open mind is just letting that go And just being open to just the experience of just sitting still Uh, blake gave a talk a couple of weeks ago Very nice talk actually

[09:32]

and uh talked about salsa dancing And uh And how how he enjoys salsa dancing And then after he had talked for a while deb asked him a question Well, how about following? The following i'm not a dancer, but I imagine that that means the one person is leading one person's following So I looked it up on youtube salsa dancing and I watched this couple dancing together and amazingly coordinated and in sync with each other it was Extraordinary and I realized you know that they were equal even though one's leading and one's following um They both are equal in terms of their sensitivity to what the other is doing And so blake's answer to um What what how do you feel about following?

[10:33]

Was well, it's like listening Listening And um I think that was a really good answer because You know in terms of open mind to really listen to people Uh in just the most ordinary way we use the term deep listening sometime and I you know, and I kind of I have some resistance to the term deep listening because why can't we do that all the time? Why do we have to make it something special? We should always be doing deep listening You know, which is just open-minded listening But we always have our agendas and that's part of how we're listening So moving on to a beginner's mind You know as we all know zen mind beginner's mind is suzuki roshi's book which is

[11:39]

Probably been in print for over 50 years, which is extraordinary for a buddhist book uh And uh And it's wonderful that he picked, you know, they picked that to to be the title um Because a beginner is not an expert So buddhism can be overwhelming in terms of its breadth And scope and and profundity and reality uh, but there's tremendous amounts of material on buddhism so his book is a Beginner starts with a beginner so everybody can relate to that. Hopefully As we get older, maybe it's hard to relate to being a beginner Although as we age we go through different phases and we're a beginner at that phase You know as our bodies Start giving out

[12:39]

I can say that from experience And the thing about beginning beginner's mind is that we all have experience as being beginners But as most maybe i'm i'm just going to be a little presumptuous Because particularly when we're younger when we're kids It's all beginner's mind, you know, we haven't been here before and uh uh You know, it's all new I can remember learning how to do handwriting when I think it was in first grade and uh What it felt like to try to make the letters That were like to what the teacher did on the board And it was really hard. I'm just not good at that It was hard for me to do that And I just felt lost like I didn't know How to go about doing it Well, eventually I settled on well if I just make all the letters

[13:40]

Hit the line on the lined paper, then that'll be some kind of evenness to it So that was my that's how I that was my progress as a beginner but I remember the feeling of Really not knowing how to do this and seeing a model of it done really well So I think we've all had that kind of experience and continue to have that hopefully continue to have that experience You know if we're really open to all the different kinds of experiences that we could have When I first started Uh I first started Doing meditation Was when cho kim trumpa came to the bay area in the early 70s And I went to a workshop that he did actually get right down the street at washington school And I really liked him a lot I really thought he was a really amazingly good teacher

[14:46]

Uh, so the first meditation I experienced had was that dharma there they were setting up dharma tattoos at that time On shotwell street in san francisco. They had a warehouse and the very first Group meditation that I did other than his workshop, which was kind of experimental Was every we had a schedule Nobody had any experience Everybody was sitting in a circle Facing each other there was a time keeper With a schedule and that was it Nobody had done this before and Uh, there was no experts there. There wasn't even a senior person from trump buzz entourage there We just had a piece of paper with a schedule on it And it was great, you know, we we made it work just by not knowing anything uh By being beginners There is a vitality in that and a freshness to that Which just worked for something as simple as sitting still even as a group

[15:49]

Also the other thing about beginners mind that makes me really trust in zen practice Is that it's about? Uh, it's not about accumulating something You know, it's not about how much you accumulate it's about where you're at right now And I think we're constantly i'm very subtle very domestic acceptable Venues always wanted to accumulate something gather something that'll make us feel good or uh uh You know give us some kind of satisfaction but just um Uh not accumulating in a way it's more like letting go Than it is accumulating as a beginner. Just be just be there And that's why I trust zen practice so much and the teachers the good teachers that teach it

[16:59]

uh It's not about how expert you can be It's about basically How there how we can just be present? genuinely So, uh I would just like to read. Oh, no, that's a little bit later So now i'd like to move into the main the gist of what I wanted to say which is ordinary mind is the way Uh, so ordinary mind Uh is some question about whether beginners mind That phrase goes back to the chinese and tong dynasty times I was talking to hozon about it this morning. It's a little unclear But it likely does

[18:00]

But uh ordinary mind definitely goes back to tong dynasty and the case uh in the muman khan as an example Ordinary mind is the dao or ordinary mind is the way This is my favorite case out of all the ones that i've looked at Um Um, and it's pretty well known to lots of people very popular case But don't take it for granted Because there's there's a lesson in it. It's quite good I'll use uh, and i'm not I don't want to assume that everybody's familiar with it. So i'm going to use a yamada collins uh Translation of how he translates or how in japanese and then they translated it into english

[19:02]

So here's the yamada collins uh description of the case, you know, basically basically goes back to the tong dynasty but Shows up in the muman khan which came out in more or less the 1200s Really at the same time book of serenity did And also when dogan was active Joshu earnestly asked nansen What is the way? Nansen answered the ordinary mind is the way Joshu asked should I direct myself toward it or not? Nansen said if you try to turn toward it you go against it Nansen Joshu asked if I do not try to turn toward it, how can I know that it is the way? Nansen answered The way does not belong to knowing or not knowing

[20:07]

Knowing is delusion Not knowing is a blank consciousness When you Really when you have really reached the true way Beyond our doubt You will find it as vast and boundless as outer space How can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong? At these words joshu was suddenly enlightened And sojin Didn't like the phrase blank consciousness for not knowing so Other options are you could say Uh, not knowing is ignorance or not knowing is confusion But blank consciousness bothered him. I'm not quite sure why but it did So

[21:28]

So the first so when I i've been going through these cases for probably five years book of serenity mostly with several people right now andrea and ellen and we just uh, you take one line at a time and try to unwind that line And knowing that it's intellectual it's not It's not koan practice in a winza in a rinzai fashion where the teacher is challenging you to get it on the spot It's an intellectual pursuit But I find that actually it's helpful um, I can't tell you why exactly it there's an accumulation of Um some kind of Familiarity with the point that they're trying to make over and over and over and over again, which is that We have a mental image Or we rely on our ideas for our consciousness

[22:29]

Rather than just being present without knowing without Any conditions just being there And the cases are the koans are really all about this and in various formats Somebody will ask a profound question about buddhism and the teacher slaps them You know, you think that's kind of rough stuff But it's it's rough because the teacher is trying to wake the person up and let go of your ideas about buddhism and zen Being profound this way or profound that way just just Be here now for real Yeah, but there's hundreds of versions of this in the three major koan collections And each one has a little bit different twist to it So You know, how do I direct myself towards it? How should I direct myself towards it? And if I don't know if it goes away from me when I do that, how should I know it?

[23:33]

So why why should it go away from you when you direct yourself to it? And the reason is and this is all just my Reasoning I suppose you could say That as soon as you're moving towards something you have an idea about what that something is That's how you move towards it you're trying to bring it into focus And if you have a preset idea about it um All of your conditioning all of our conditioning And past Frameworks and habits are all at work because this is this is our reference points Uh when we're approaching something just to do it with an open mind and Uh, if we have an idea about it

[24:34]

We may have a good we may embellish our idea but it's still going to be an idea even if it's pretty Stimulating it'll still be an idea. So how do we go beyond ideas? And dogma to just actually Being who we actually are without without qualification So, you know joshua is playing the straight man here joshua is about 20 years old and nonsense in his 50s But joshua's made a lot is already a sort of a brilliant young student So he's he's being a straight man uh And if you if you try to turn out if I don't try to turn away towards it, how can I know that it's the way Uh, and then nonsense answered the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing

[25:42]

So just think how much uh of Our identity or our experience is based on the feeling that we know something And we become proud of what we know especially if we're more expert in a particular discipline or functioning Uh, we become proud proud of our knowing we know a lot We know more than other people do so Uh, and it could be very very subtle especially within zen practice could be very subtle But there's plenty to know in zen practice You know or to think we know and uh Have some pride in that. Yeah, i've been around a long time, you know, i mean i'm you know, I I sort of understand this So it could be that we understand something but What nonsen is getting at is not? knowing something It's more being something

[26:46]

So And then he answered the way does not belong to knowing or not knowing So we set up a duality there between you know, or you don't know So he's trying to go beyond that duality. This is you know, classic non-dualism in a zen koan you know um How do you go beyond or I wouldn't even say beyond? I don't like the word beyond it's It just bothers me So knowing and not knowing How do you? Not depend on Knowing something or not knowing as your reference points What if it's just not a matter of how much you know, or you don't know? What who are you then? Knowing is a delusion and I think the reason he says that is because You know, we we think that this is reality But it's just it's our idea of reality. It's not necessarily reality. It's our idea of reality

[28:00]

And not knowing is confusion or ignorance Yeah, we can uh not knowing Uh Not knowing is still Linked into knowing we're still we're still In the framework of knowing something. So what about when we're not in the framework of knowing something? How does that feel? When you've really reached the true the true way beyond all doubt You will find it as vast and boundless as outer space Uh, how can it be talked about on a level of right and wrong? So it's interesting about doubt, um, I don't you know, I don't notice that I have a lot of doubt

[29:07]

Uh I have some skepticism sometimes but I don't have a lot of doubt although but then if I look at it more carefully, I realize I do uh, I doubt my own being so um, I think it's forget who is it says it that um One of the great teachers said something like Uh To have trust in the teacher trust in the teaching and trust in yourself Which is I don't know if trust is the opposite of doubt. It's not necessarily but Rather than doubt have confidence I think confidence is a better word have confidence in the teacher which I Genuinely did with the teachers that i've Mostly mostly liked and so I stayed with sojin for as long as I have

[30:10]

Uh because I trusted him and I had confidence in his His, uh, I don't know what to say I had confidence in his being Uh So Uh, so confidence in He didn't take the easy way out. He wasn't he wasn't a formalistic teacher In some ways. Yeah. Well in some ways he was he had the same kind of schtick over and over again sometimes but he had a quality of Being real and being human also So having confidence in your teacher having confidence in the teaching

[31:12]

uh, and then confidence in yourself uh Is uh All are related to doubt and we have if we doubt one of those three We have a problem So and then my Foyan is my it's a kind of a minor league A minor league in terms of being known Tong dynasty teacher zen teacher. I really like a lot uh And uh He said, you know when I finally cleared up my doubt Uh, then everything was clear. I didn't really understand what he meant. I still don't really understand what he meant but I have some inkling to it that because I have no doubt in the teacher or no doubt in the And the teaching but I do doubt myself So How does doubt work in terms of

[32:18]

um Really being able to be present right now right here And we're talking about the subtle kinds too not the gross doubt but the subtle doubt At these words joshua was suddenly enlightened or at least he had a realization experience let's just put it that way And then there's a verse that goes with this That um Oh, oh just one thing I wanted to add that I forgot to say um in terms of knowing and not knowing there's a story about suzuki roshi that Working on his on doing helping with and with other people edit a book about him about uh of sojins roshi's, um Lectures and his memoir I came on this little story, which is that at tasahara one day

[33:22]

um Suzuki roshi loved to move huge rocks down at tasahara stream And he'd move them into place in the gardens and even the memorial site where he was eventually buried was a rock a big rock That he had moved up there with the help of many other people With you know, it's taking all day, you know to go a certain number of feet And he's down there in the stream bed one day with with several of his helpers working on this moving this enormous rock and somebody stands up on is standing up on the Bank saying what are you doing down there? And suzuki roshi called back. I don't know So, you know so for um I can just imagine that it is a perfect example of not knowing, you know I don't know But he was very he was very um

[34:23]

Meticulous about it at the same time So at the end of ordinary mind is the way There's a verse which muman Writes in muman writes a verse for every case in the muman khan And his verse is the spring flowers The moon in autumn the cool breezes of summer the winter's snow If idle concerns do not cloud the mind this is our happiest season I'm just curious how many people are familiar with that verse having seen uh, see read this case Could you just put your hand up? I'm just curious About half Okay. Thanks. I'll read it one more time the spring flowers the moon in autumn the cool breezes of summer

[35:25]

the winter's snow If idle concerns do not cloud the mind this is our happiest season So now i'm going to sort of veer off into territory, which is Uh, i'm taking a chance at sticking my neck out Because I haven't heard anybody else discuss it like I or have a take on it like I have so I'll just tell you my take on this Uh, and I don't know why I maybe i'm missing something, but I don't know why it hasn't come up in other commentaries It strikes me that it's interesting That after this the ordinary mind is the way case Which is very all about non-duality And You know, not you know, not knowing and known not knowing and not not knowing It's all about not, you know open mind and non-duality Um, there's one

[36:26]

Problem about well, you can that's easy to say but what is it that prevents us from Being able to see that to see to be able to to uh, I won't say understand embody non-duality or Be aware of non-duality may be a better way to say it along with duality And the reason is just was obvious in all of our experiences our minds are constantly working churning out ideas thoughts plans uh judgments uh I like this. I don't like that. I'm going to move over towards this kind of food I don't like that kind of food. I wish I had more of that kind of food that kind of stuff and We all do it so The case is very non-dualistic But mu'min is going at just this one line if idle concerns do not cloud the mind So he's conditioning

[37:28]

This whole case on that Which is pretty bold and I think it's absolutely appropriate to mention it's kind of It's actually kind of prosaic if you think about it Because the case is so vast, you know, it's vast like outer space Uh, even though we're saying it's ordinary uh But the verse is saying Yes, this all you know, this is your best moment right now uh As long as Idle concerns don't cloud our mind And this is just basic buddhist meditation Idle concerns clouding our mind. So the combination of those two Emphasises is really interesting to me and I don't see anybody else commenting on it. So I don't know why Maybe they're they don't want to get down in the weeds and pick it out to be picky like i'm being

[38:32]

So Um, I had a shosan, uh session With sojin more than the last year or so actually One of our I think I forget when it was exactly And this is relates to ordinary mind and my question to him was What is ordinary mind? Mm-hmm And he said good question I felt that's good and then uh He said holy I don't know shit I don't under holy, you know, like like christianity kind of holy. Come on, you know, holy And I said I don't understand he said I know That was it it was Totally unsatisfying shows on exchange But then uh working on on helping to edit his book I came upon a a

[39:58]

and actually and he actually he has a A whole Lecture which will show up in the book about ordinary mind is the way He goes off on a lot of tangents within it, but it's interesting But still it's in the it will be in the book. Hopefully Um And as part of the material that was associated with that from the original transcript He said that when he was in elementary school as a or anyway in school sometime he The teacher told him that the word holy comes from the word whole And it means wholeness So it doesn't have a necessarily have a religious Or deity kind of uh meaning to it It could just mean wholeness, you know, uh sort of like holistic the Uh holistic

[40:59]

You see holistic health, you know, it use a little bit of everything it takes from every direction So that's kind of how he was saying the word holy But I didn't know that and uh kind of irritated me because you know, holy has this kind of meaning that we associate with You know the holy Pope, you know the kind of Uh a deity involved somehow And then uh In his talk he says something like holy and ordinary go together And What we call what we call if everything is ordinary everything we do At the same time. It's holy so that's Kind of like this is your best season Each thing is your best season

[42:00]

um If you can see it like that So that's what he meant when he used the word holy so ordinary and holy go together And suzuki roshi also said, you know, we are uh We are ordinary people and we are also buddhas So really suzuki roshi was saying the same kind of thing only with different words I think of it like Uh some kind of equality Um That if there's if you believe in god There's a right and a wrong in the universe And god determines what's right and what's wrong and there's scriptures that will tell you

[43:02]

What how god feels apparently? um If you don't believe in god Where's the authority? Where's the universal authority about what's right? What's wrong? That's that's absolutely Trustworthy within different spheres a human sphere. We have our human sphere which is right and wrong in order to get along Murdering somebody is wrong. Helping somebody is right um generally speaking So in a human sphere, but in a universal sphere uh, you know You know up on neptune they don't that may not be their issue so uh Yeah in a universal sphere there's absolute equality who's to say that one thing is more important than the other So I think that's what they're getting at in uh in that verse

[44:05]

And that's how I would describe it is the equality of each thing being um Alive for what it is Rather than ranking it as being more more more or less useful more or less this or more or less that Hmm So to close, uh, I just wanted to read suzuki roshi's Hopefully I can find it Suzuki roshi did his own translation of the case Which I've is is a kind of idiosyncratic translation. It's not literal It's his own It's his way of teaching us at the same time as translating the case And I just think it's terrific. So I just wanted to read it to you. This is suzuki roshi's take

[45:07]

on on the translation Of ordinary mind is the way or the How he would translate it One day nansen allowed joshu to meet him in his room Joshu asked nansen What is the true way? Ordinary mind is the true way said nansen Is it something to be attained or not to be attained asked joshu To try to attain it is to avert from it said nansen When you do not try to attain it How do you know the true way asked joshu? To this question nansen's answer was very polite The true way is not a matter to be known or not to be known To know is to have a limited idea of it And not to know is just psychological unawareness

[46:09]

If you want to achieve the absolute where there is no doubt You should be clear enough and vast enough to be like empty space Hereby joshu acquired full understanding of the true way of zen Now that's my favorite version of this case I can't can't improve on that ever So, uh, we have some time for questions or comments or disagreements also, so, uh, please speak up if you want to Um blake will you call on people Yes, I will ron Uh christian, please, uh yourself and ask the questions Blake, uh, thank you ron. Hi ron. Um I uh trust in sojourn so, uh Where sojourn and I disagreed? Uh opened up dialogue with loving intentions so, uh

[47:11]

That's his memory. That's a blessing for me now, I trust you, um ron, so What do you say on how to keep our collective mind open in resuming in-person practices in our zendo And thank you for your holy test show Thank you um, well, could you focus on a little bit more like There's a problem there where the people have different feelings about how we should reopen And the committee that's responsible for making the decisions is trying to weigh all those possibilities So so i'm not quite sure what your question is. I mean, how do you what's the best way to do that? What do you what do you think is the best way? Oh, I think that the way they're doing it is pretty good. I've been in on the discussions and Um, they said well, you know, we read this You know, especially with the delta variant coming up

[48:15]

Things are changing. We thought it was going to be this but now it's that so and Fauci said this last week and And since so-and-so said that and then but we also know that the people in the sangha are really hurting For not being back in person so Uh, I think that they're my feeling is they're erring on the side of caution Just to be protective of people that's more important than Um that has a priority over Satisfying people, uh who are want to get back into action and I think it's uh I sort of I relate to that attitude of wanting to protect people physically actually uh, but uh Uh If I was you know, it's an enormous position of responsibility That's what I think of and really really kind of

[49:17]

Basically the bottom line is hosan and how he feels about it Think about the responsibility there And when I think about the responsibility of that person or those few people have to to call it I just feel respectful of their process Having known that they're really really are thinking about this way and that way and they're really not closing anything off Thank you, what's your what's your friend's name by the way? Mello What is it? Uh, mello Mello Hi Hi Thank you christian ross blum, please unmute yourself and ask a question Hey ron, hi ross you spoke of gross doubt and we should

[50:19]

um Practice subtle doubt. Could you say a little about the difference as you see that? Uh, those two doubts Oh, no, I didn't say practice it I said be aware of it Uh what I meant I could have said practice it but what I meant was be aware of it um it's uh There are gross doubts and subtle doubts it seems to be much harder to be aware or self-aware Of the subtle doubts because we're so used to it. We don't even notice it. Maybe we just take it for granted. That's who we are um Could you give an example of a subtle doubt that you have Uh, it's it's too convoluted psychologically Yeah, it's I can't I can't unconvoluted it, okay, um it you know, uh It's it's a lack of some confidence I think

[51:22]

uh uh Based on my whole life stuff, you know growing up in a certain kind of way and uh And being in touch with that that kind of doubt is important It's subtle and so and I think that the subtleties of our habits They're really the our habits that are really subtle psychological habits that are subtle are Uh, if we can tune into them, that's good I don't know what you should do with them, but just being aware of it I think when you're aware of something you begin to experience it more I agree. That's that's a good start and a good finish. Thank you very much. Thanks Ellen webb, please unmute yourself and ask a question or make a comment um My question was actually somewhat similar to ross's so I won't uh repeat that but I wondered if you could read the last line of the

[52:28]

um of suzuki roshi's Translation or whatever interpretation of the koan which includes the word doubt I think Okay, let's see Oh, yeah, if you want to achieve the absolute If you want to achieve the absolute Where there is no doubt you should be clear enough and vast enough to be like empty space so I think that that's uh But how I read that is is the way I read fo yan's doubt That even though they they've had kind of realization experiences There's some question about Um Are they really on the are they Sorry, okay There's some question about do they really have it right or

[53:35]

I don't know their experience. So I i'm just You know fumbling around I can't really tell you how they feel. I don't know But the kind of doubt that he's talking about I think is There's no question. You're just aligned with the reality as is It's not a matter of Maybe I am maybe i'm not you know, it's just there's an alignment there happening I don't know what that experience is like. So I don't want to Speculate on it. But that's what I that's how I Try to understand what you're saying that um That Because you know kohan yamada talks a lot about uh No, excuse me. Yamada kohan talks a lot about People having a kensho experience and then being caught on their kensho experience And hanging clinging to it

[54:37]

so Uh, I think it's something like that where They they have some realization, but There's still some uncertainty. There's still some question and And when their doubt when that goes away There's a difference that's what I think he's talking about, but Yeah, I don't I don't personally have that kind of experience so I don't know Maybe one more yes sandeep l, please Unmute yourself and ask a question or make a comment Your talk, um, I love how you interpreted Trust in yourself the teaching and the teacher as uh confidence Uh, what do you think the role of faith has?

[55:38]

along this path And is there a covalent between confidence and faith That's a hard question Um It's too hard for me to to to answer that but um My feeling about faith is I would call it trust actually That you you have you trust something you have faith in something Uh That there's a but for me there's an important distinction that it's trust that

[56:42]

Is It's trust that's not dependent upon some kind of verification and it's also not dependent upon a belief system It's So, I don't know how to I don't know how to articulate it But for me all I can talk about is my experience with faith And I have great faith in zen practice It doesn't mean that it's perfect or that there aren't problems with it But all in all I think it's a really good road to be on And I just have faith in that and Various teachers the best teachers that i've seen I have faith in them even if they have glitches and problems So it doesn't depend on them being perfect It doesn't believe it doesn't depend on god existing or not existing it's more of a Uh Confidence in something that's not doesn't have to be proven

[57:58]

You don't have to prove it anymore It it it includes It's it's it's got enough Given it the faith has got enough given it that It doesn't have to be exactly Perfect That's the best I can do it's tricky faith is tricky because faith means different things to different people How about yourself I think what came up for me while you're speaking was um faith has a component of fearlessness and surrender and um I think if you're embodying that then you're definitely embodying confidence as well so Yeah, I mean i'll sit with it. That was it's got me my wheels turning good That's the most we can ask for All right, thank you

[59:01]

Okay, thanks everybody, um I realize, you know, i'm sort of a little bit loose when I stumble through this but That's just just the way it is. Sorry But i'm happy to talk to everybody. Thank you

[59:17]

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