Those things are happening simultaneously. And in the last lecture you put it in a little bit different way, like this is the unconstructed and the constructed. But when you talk about that, isn't it that you all what you are doing you construct somehow a construction around the unconstruction? Isn't this what you have been done in the last lecture? Building a construct, constructing something around the unconstruction? And isn't it to say both things happened happen simultaneously, isn't that already again a construction to say there's both at the same time? So my thing is, how can I experience that without building a construction somehow around the thing which is unconstructed?

[01:07]

And I've always the feeling, no matter how deep my understanding is, And sometimes I say, I have the feeling, oh yeah, that's right. But it's always the thing, but then I already construct, construct around the thing, that's right, around the unconstructed, around this absolute. Well, I think it's in the Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, he gives advice to his disciples who are gathered around the deathbed. And I think the last thing he says is, what anybody says to you, whatever he asks you or says to you, tell them the opposite. And that's basically the basic idea behind all of this. If you say there's a person, then I have to say there's no person. If you say there's no person, then I have to say there's a person. Because it's neither extreme.

[02:09]

And all you can do is practice with denying both extremes and something happens. That something happens, we could say, is the unconstructed unconstruction or the emptiness of emptiness. But we have to, you know, if we just say… If I say there's the constructed and the unconstructed, that's already at least somewhat approaching. Even if that is a construction, it's still not the same kind of construction as just saying constructed. Or if I just... I don't even say... If I say constructed already, the unconstructed is implied. So to call it a construction is already to imply... non-construction but that is also construction but it's not the same construction and it's not a construction with as much structure as to not point it out at all so all I can do is set you in the direction it's up to your practice to discover it because what I say is a construction that's for sure but it's a construction in the direction of the unconstructed even if I make a construction of it

[03:36]

It's a construction with a direction, just like I said to Elvis. And the direction is your responsibility. Well, it's for sure the way of teaching, and I guess koans are using this way of teaching a lot, or a lot about koans is about this teaching. But finally, isn't it that somehow the final, the... the truth or the absolute is why we are talking somehow all about the Dharma but there is that also to say there is no Dharma to talk about and there's also no one to understand or to realize the Dharma. This is not only, this is not only, or cannot only be a way of teaching. It's, I mean, this is a kind of, isn't it a kind of absolute that is, which is... But it's not an absolute independent of the road.

[04:42]

So I just cannot take... That's fine. That's it. That's it. That's not possible. Then I also have to take this one. This is also the I. We can't have host without the guest. Can't have guest without the host. And it says, Haji again says something like, knowing the absolute, or knowing the pure and undefiled, borrow a road to walk on. And he said, Hongzhi is talking, in this Tungshan that he teaches, Hongzhi says, he talks about the jade face free of dust and the sky with no clouds and things like that, but he's talking about the experience of the absolute. Knowing the absolute, then he used the word borrow, which I think is quite clever. Borrow what like to see by.

[05:45]

and borrow a road to walk on, which means to generate or something, but means from your culture, take the ingredients, borrow, it's just some construct, borrow enough to make your own road. That's a very different thing when you say, my career or my life is just something I borrowed to live with other people and talk to. And this light I'm seeing here is borrowed so that I can have a world in which to interact with you. So Hongji is being very creative in trying to find a word, instead of saying, form is emptiness, emptiness is form, he's saying, knowing emptiness, borrow form. But if you don't borrow form, you can't know emptiness, because the Absolute is form and emptiness, not emptiness. And so, again, we're not talking about some kind of scientific world.

[06:51]

We're saying that to know there's no one to know, or the no one to save, is an actual feeling and way of being. But it's a way of being in the midst of, it's a way of non-being in the midst of being. You can't have non-being without being. So there's heat and there's the four elements, and of course these elements, again, he doesn't go into it, are practices of knowing your own solidity, fluidity, motility, and heat, also work with space. But also, there is no such thing as the four elements, and no one who experiences them because that's also the case.

[07:55]

I think we have here the basic formula of the Heart Sutra, which is the Heart Sutra says the five skandhas are empty. But the five skandhas are empty In other words, it's hard to say the self is empty. But you can say the five skandhas are empty. Because it's very difficult to experience the self as empty. Because we're attached to the self, we're identifying the self, and if you feel there's no self, it's like being crazy, like being out in the world with no boundaries or whatever. But if you, instead of experiencing the self, you experience the five skandhas as self, all right? So what you've done is you've taken the self and you've changed your experience of the self into the five skandhas.

[09:02]

And you've done it enough so that you see how the five skandhas also are a process of generating consciousness and then the sense of self. eliminating or dissolving the sense of consciousness into awareness, and the sense of self dissolves. Okay? So the Vaisakhandas are a process of which you see that the sense of self is linked to consciousness. All right? Okay. So what you've done is you've taken self, and you've begun through adept practice to experience it as related to consciousness and related to that self itself is a construct that you can experience through the skandhas, and the skandhas itself can be deconstructed. And through the skandhas itself,

[10:04]

we can function as if we had a usual self. Okay? Because we have associations, perceptions, etc. So the skandhas are a kind of self. Let's call the skandhas the Buddhist self. Knowing the Buddhist self, we can see that that's empty. In other words, it's much easier to see the skandhas as empty than to see the self as empty. So the Heart Sutra says, find your experiences through the vijnanas and the skandhas and then you can experience emptiness. So it's, let's make form, a kind of form, that we can know that form is emptiness. Does that make sense? Okay. But you still have form and emptiness. But now you have a form that implies emptiness and an emptiness that implies form. And the imaginary is to understand things in a way that does not imply emptiness.

[11:08]

Okay. What do you think? I think you answered my question already, but I will try it again. So I'm thinking of the precepts, which I'm going to take in some weeks. What are you going to do with them when you take them? Where are you going to take them? I'm just teasing you. So I'm thinking of it and it was Suzuki Roshi talked about it in his last chapter we talked about and I don't know if I have the right understanding because my thinking now is as he is explaining it you just can do everything you want But you don't have to hurt sentient beings or harm sentient beings. You can do anything you want, but you don't have to harm sentient beings. These extreme sides you are talking about just now, to see or not to see, so everything is right.

[12:21]

Everything is the... is a correct way of living, of being, except of being aware to do it. You mean this is about the earrings? Yes. It sounds like you have a plastic ear. Yeah, I didn't like that whole discussion there too much. It's pretty unclear, I think. And I'm sure somebody in the garden, you know, like the whole, it started out with somebody saying there was a spider on the mokage. So I think later somebody, I'm sure that in those days in Tassamara people were talking about, we're in the garden and should we kill the earwigs or should we not kill the earwigs, etc.

[13:27]

And I think what Sukershi is trying to say, if you're working in the garden, and there's actually a word, awarei, which is spelled A-W-A-R-E in Romanized Japanese. It looks like ware in English, but it's pronounced aware. And it means, though, the awareness... You can understand that ware is a word to mean the awareness that you can't do anything without causing suffering. That whatever you do causes suffering. And so to be aware that you're causing suffering, just by living you're causing suffering. There's no way to avoid that. Whether I grind my teeth and kill tons of things or... So I know what I'm talking to. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. And if she was working on someone's mouth, she has to kill a lot of things to work on the mouth, right?

[14:34]

Okay. So, to be aware of that is awari. So, basically that's what Sukershi's talking about. He's saying, if you're in the garden, you're trying to grow vegetables and you're killing things, you're just doing the best you can. You don't say, oh, I've broken the precepts of killing. You're trying to, but you're aware that you're killing. But your overall aim is not to kill. Then you're not breaking the priesthood. That's basically all he means. He doesn't mean, yes, God has another earring. I think I'll see what that's like, too. I had quite a discussion with Tassar once, and we were trying to decide whether it's better And this was always, I was there, you know, there were a lot of flies in the summer. And in fact, one of the jokes at Tassajara was, what has 120 legs and flies?

[15:46]

And it's a Nenju ceremony in the summer, because there were 65 people. 130 legs, and they're all standing there, and we stood outside. Like here, we stand inside. There they stood outside. And it'd be 120 or 130 legs, flies all over them. Well, it has 120 legs and 130 legs and flies. So my little cabin would be full of flies. And so if I hit them with a swatter, was it better to hit them with a swatter or shoo them outside because it was getting cold? So if I should have shooed them outside, they'd die from the cold. I'd kill them inside. When we decided, killing them inside, you were selecting for fast flies. Shooing them outside, you were selecting for cold-resistant flies. Anyway, we have these kind of moral questions in Buddhism.

[16:49]

What should I select for cold-resistant or fast flies? Yes? What has been on my mind quite a bit is the question of dissolving the duality of the present moment that you've been talking about quite a bit. And before I can dissolve the duality, I have to know what the duality of the present moment is. And that is kind of what I've been looking at, working with, basically even coming down to how do I experience the present moment which is so short and it's tied into a lot of what has been said and this question of consciousness I walk outside, I hear the birds sing this morning. I don't know if they were going out, someone would like birds to meet. It's very good you're not constructing a conscious world.

[17:50]

Apparently in America, the Indian Ocean coyotes and thrifties, they can appear in different ways. So I hear that, I see the blue sky, I'm aware of the sunshine, I experience that it's warm, and okay, the question is, am I in the present moment when I kind of make a notion of that and say, oh, I'm hearing the birds, this is nice, or... It's springtime or whatever, or am I already gone out of it? And is it before that? And will I ever reach that? I don't know. So this is one part, and the other is that being in duality. I experience something through my senses, whether I'm walking or I'm doing this or that.

[18:56]

I'm not always in that state. Oftentimes, in what I call drift mind, I invented that. It's a big term. Can I use it in a lecture? I'll credit you. I'm often in this space where it's not thinking, it's not awareness itself, so I call that drift mind. And when I'm aware of walking, is that duality or not? Is dissolving the duality of the present moment just being, I don't know, form, feeling, perception, or what have you? I don't know. Yeah. I would say that a practical way to practice with this would be to say, to draw yourself away from distinction. If you find yourself making distinction, try to pull yourself away from the distinction.

[20:01]

into pure hearing or barely hearing. So you can work with this, again, as we've been saying, as a kind of direction. You make a distinction, you draw yourself away from the distinction. I think that's one way to practice with this sense of dissolving dualities. Probably one of the best ways I can think of. What's happening when you're practicing is in a situation like this in a Sangha, because always in a Sangha there's people with different levels of experience. Okay, so we have various experiences. We have Sashin experience. We have the practice period experience. We have Zazen experience. And some of our Zazens may be more concentrated than others. Or more free of distinctions than others.

[21:05]

Something like that. So we have a mixture of experience. Sashin, some Zazens are different than others. Some Sashin, sometimes the third day or fourth day is different from the fifth day or whatever. So forth. In addition to that, you have various teachings. And those teachings sometimes coincide with your experience. Sometimes they're actually behind your experience and you say, oh, that's what I've been doing. And sometimes, and very often, they're ahead of your experience. Okay. So, if you really engage in experience, but really engage in practice, and with a sangha and with a teacher, Then there's going to be a large quantity of teachings, a large percentage of teachings that are way ahead of your experience. So what do you do with teachings that are way ahead of your experience? You hold them as intentions, you hold them as recognitions, which you don't fully recognize, but they make sense.

[22:10]

Like, if a teaching sticks with you, it suggests that your practice is not far behind. If your practice is way behind that, it doesn't stick, you just carry it, you don't even hear it. But when things start to stick, it means you don't quite get it yet, but somehow it's stuck to your practice, and your practice isn't there yet. Does that make sense? So you hold that, and eventually the holding of it draws your practice toward it. Or it sits over here a little bit. But when you practice it, sometimes I've described, wasn't it in this last Boulder seminar, I described the strange hook koan. Sometimes a koan, for instance, is a very strange hook. You read this koan, and there's this strange thing. What's that? And you don't even know what it is. And it's, you know, hanging in there doesn't make any sense, but I can't screw it in.

[23:13]

Thank you. And so it's just there, you know, sometimes it's way up there, you know, sometimes it's down here. And then one day you're talking with some friends, maybe you're at a restaurant, and right in the middle of the dining, right in the middle of the restaurant, right through the air, a very strange fish swims through. It's swimming in the conversation, and it goes, and it's caught. You say, ah, that was it. But sometimes you, and sometimes it's a straight hook. He said, fishing with a straight hook. And sometimes, what kind of fish do you catch with a straight hook? But sometimes it's a very particular hook for a very particular experience, and you know the hook before you know the fish. Does that make sense? And the fish might not appear to be Zaza, and the fish might actually swim through a conversation. He said, oh, okay. Practice then is, adept practice then is, the ability to hold, like they say, hold the five skandhas before you, is to hold a number of teachings before you, in your presence, which your experience hasn't yet come to.

[24:22]

But there's a kind of promise, if you can hold it, the practice isn't far behind. So there's a kind of trust you can have in practice. If you can hold the teaching or teaching catches you, your practice is anticipating that. Okay. Mark. You already answered my question in a somewhat different way, but it was a bit like Katrin's question. When you were talking yesterday about the unconstructed and the constructed and you turned away, then you came back and said, now I'm constructing you. I didn't feel as if I was being particularly constructed, but this question popped in my mind. If you turned away and experienced the unconstructed, what chances would there be that when you turned around you would find a room full of zebras? Because in the unconstructed, and the answer is karma, as you said with Katrin, but in the unconstructed, as I understood it, absolutely anything can happen.

[25:25]

At that moment, there are no constructions in the unconstructed. So when you turn, you don't see a room full of zebras. You see what it was you turned away from. And is that because you're... karma and my karma and everybody else's karma are all joining together at this moment to create that one moment that even if you turn away from you still have to turn around and confront it too and it's not a room full of zebra from the unconstructed I'm sorry you didn't get constructed when I looked back at you I didn't take it too far into here It's a good question. Of course, if I turn away, practically speaking, what I actually do is I see this construction and then I turn around and see this construction.

[26:27]

So the contrast of two constructions. The contrast of two or multitude of constructions is also emptiness. But in addition, and that's, you know, I'm talking here about actual practice which fits into, barely fits into the teaching, because the teaching is so simple compared to actual practice. All right. So, on the one hand, I have the contrast of Kuan Yin as a construction, and Martin as a construction. Some similarities. Okay. So, or the contrast of Mark and you. Okay. Now, if I have Mark, I have the contrast of Mark as a karmic formation, and you as a karmic formation.

[27:32]

If I look at the Kuan Yin, I have a figure which represents three different karmic formations, or represents pure compassion. So now I have two or three different constructions here. The altar, another living being, and you. So those are all constructions. In addition, I can have an experience of the non-constructed or unconstructed. So all of those are flowing together all the time. Now, each one is a slightly different physical experience. So if I look at Mark, I have a physical experience that corresponds to Mark. If I look at Konyin, I have a physical experience that corresponds to my way of understanding Konyin. And also the circle, the way her robes make circles actually influences me.

[28:39]

It's different than if it were a lot of sharp edges and things like that. So it's not just my associations, it's actually made to create certain associations. I'm making this complicated on purpose. And then there's the construction of you at this moment and accumulated since I've known you. In addition, as you said, there's this whole room which we are not only cooperating and making a common world because of our culture, and I think it would be a different world if our culture were different. I really do. I'm convinced of that. But at this particular moment, We are all, and in the practice period, you start spending time with people, we begin to affect each other in the simple way that it's very different to sit in a zendo by yourself than to sit in a zendo with a room of people.

[29:46]

You can try to sit by yourself in a zendo, but you can't sit by yourself in a zendo if there's other people. They influence your practice. So there's all that going on, right? So, of course... whether I look at the koinon or mark or draw inward to this, what we call manjushri, or sometimes this pulse, as you know, is called manjushri avalokiteshvara koinon. So if I draw inward—inward isn't quite the right word—say, dissolve distinctions. And I really have my mind, say, merged with space or the Dharmakaya. When I look back at you, yes, the construction of the group, all that construction comes together, but there's a gap when I have looked at you from the unconstructed to the constructed.

[30:51]

It's also a gap when I look from Mark to you, and that gap is also emptiness. But when I look from the unconstructed and I don't bring associations, I don't load the image, I just look at you with a bare looking, you might be a Martian. You really might be. Or even a zebra. In other words, there's a quality of surprise to my seeing you that isn't much different than if you were a Martian. and I'm not sure whether you're a Martian or not. I can't say what you are, because if I don't have an experience of giving you a formation, the formation happens at this moment. So, if I'm looking, say that someone comes to the door, knocks on the door and says, take me to your leader, and he's a Martian, or she's a Martian, how would I know? I would look at that Martian with considerable surprise.

[31:53]

webbed feet, I don't know. Martians are always made up of sort of animal and human characteristics, you know, we don't have to draw something. So it's got webbed feet and four eyes and quite a few earwigs. I look at it and say, wow, that's the earwig. I don't know, that kind of surprise... You can have that same surprise when I look at you or Dieter or anyone, and that surprise is there because I'm constructing what this person is who's knocked on the door and said, take me to your leader. This is an old joke, I guess you all know. That surprise is not different than when I give... Do you get the picture? Yeah. Okay, so that surprise is related to generating the image in the moment of looking and not generating the images from a previous... So, yes, you are a zebra. A short Zen answer would be said, yes, you are a zebra.

[32:57]

What's the joke with the beader? I forget. I can't remember what it is. Something about a Martian who comes to, an alien comes and knocks on the door and says, take me, I don't remember what it's about. Yeah. I mean, although you give already various answers to my question, I put it again. I also work with the phrase, this is mind. You work with the phrase? This is mind. Yeah. And one layer of it is... this is intention. So, my question would be if there's a perception and the perception is to some extent, intentional. And can the whole intention be known? Because there is some kind of intention in, I guess, stays in the dark.

[34:07]

But when looking back on experiences, I always experience attitudes with which I started out, or you said views are not separable from actions. Views form a mirror. Or if I try to deconstruct them, I land in a net of courses, different courses I could go on. I'm sorry, I can't hear you. I'm landing in a net of courses. Yeah. flowing, coming together, and sometimes I can follow different threads, but I never get the whole picture. So, I just had to say, okay, accept the fact that experience it's just a product also of none or not known intentions and just stop with them and accept that?

[35:20]

Or is there a way of penetrating deeper and deeper into getting to know what one is conditioned by and the knowing of the intention behind that perception as intention? I think the basic approach, perhaps insight of Buddhism, though I'd have to think about whether it's an insight in contrast to psychology. But let's assume maybe that it's an insight in contrast to psychology. Psychology pursues the idea that you can know intentions. or know causes sufficiently to undo the effect, or to expose some kind of network of causes that if you understand it well enough you change the effect.

[36:20]

Buddhism would say that's true too. But Buddhism would say it's not very effective, really, to indefinitely try to find out the causes, because the causes are too myriad. Everything has caused each thing. So, in a way, yes, it's good to find some direct causes, if you can. And it's good to practice in a way that you begin to notice, I would say, not causes so much as triggers. In other words, there are certain things the trigger state of mind, what caused the trigger may be less important than the trigger. Does that make sense? You can see that certain states of mind or headaches or attitudes or moods They're not always there. There's a topography to them. There's a point at which the slope starts or the decline starts.

[37:22]

And usually that decline or slope starts with a trigger. Something happens. Some mental or physical act happens that causes the headache or the mood or the whatever, right? Okay. Now, that trigger is not accessible, really accessible, unless you practice mindfulness. Because generally we have the headache or the mood. We're into it long before, long after it started. We notice it long after it started. It takes a considerable sensitivity or a muscular mindfulness. As I say, a mindfulness in which the density is such that like an insect, normally we don't see the path of an insect. But when the the insect is a water one and jumps along the water, we can see its path. So if you practice mindfulness sufficiently, the awareness is much more like water, and you can see the path of events.

[38:26]

Now, the path of events, you can actually also practice meditation and try to trace the path of events down, and it's kind of interesting sometimes to see if you can pick up a visual image, say in third grade. And then stay with that and imagine each child in the room, what the teacher was wearing and what happened. You can actually get, so you can go into a very dense recall. And that's useful to practice sometimes. But in general, the insight of Buddhism has been it's much better to notice the trigger in the present than the cause of the trigger in the past. Because if you know the trigger in the present, you can dissolve that trigger. But you can't notice the trigger unless you have an adept mindfulness practice. Now, further insight, I would say, of Buddhism is that to know the causes or to know your intention

[39:32]

up to a point is useful, but much more powerful is to be able to dissolve the dualities altogether. You don't even have to understand what caused them, just dissolve them. If you keep dissolving them, you also transform the past in the way the past affects you. So I would say that's the basic emphasis of Buddhist practice. The minor thing is to understand the cause. The more important thing is to understand the trigger. And more important than that and the primary thing is to dissolve the duality itself, which then changes the way the past affects you. Okay. Now, it's also interesting to notice the difference, as you seem to be, between saying, this is mind, or, you know, this is mind, or this mind is Buddha, or this object is mind, or this is intention.

[40:44]

Now, if you take a word like intention, which is another way of saying mind, but if you say intention, something different happens. You say mind, something different happens. If you say this mind is Buddha, something different happens. If you say this is feeling, something different happens. So whatever I say, it's like knowing four different Dieters and three Peters. I know Peter Erxler. I know you, Dieter. I know a couple other Dieters. I know Dieter Schmidt. Well, I can't take this Dieter Schmidt, the Dieter I know from Dieter Schmidt, and apply it to you. You're a different Dieter from me. And Peter Erxler is a different Dieter. And Peter and Dieter are different. Okay. But words are like that. I can have the word... At another time, mind can be like a different dieter. Two dieters, two minds, and then you can have dieter or mind or perception, etc.

[41:49]

And what's interesting is when you begin to take either the same word at a different time or a different word or view or phrase and bring it into the situation, something else opens up. So what you begin to do from that is you begin to bring into the situation something that you don't bring to the situation but that arises from the situation and is no longer language. It no longer fits into the category of mind or attention or something. It's very useful to use words and they're a great treasure because they open up Words make our mind more subtle. I'm convinced our minds would be quite primitive without language. Language makes our mind, but also language is at the same time more subtle than... Mind is more subtle than language, even though language creates mind. So you work with the subtlety of mind, which can create language, by beginning to open it up into something that's not...

[42:54]

that's a subtlety that goes beyond language, which then begins to generate a mind that's more subtle than the mind generated by language. But it's still a kind of identification, our process. Am I making sense? Okay. Yeah, okay. My question was also around the precepts that Martina was asking. In the Sandokai lectures, there's also this earwig chapter, but I did one before. We're looking at duality and non-duality. If you're looking at the precepts, we have a differentiation between, let's say, more harmful or less harmful ways of being in the world. So there is actually a differentiation in that. At the same time, there is the notion of there is no good and there is no bad. And then again, Suzuki Roshi says, don't work with the precepts in a dualistic way. Not to eat meat is to eat meat. They kind of hit home with me as someone who doesn't eat meat. So I'm trying to understand a little bit better how do we, in our lineage, how do we work with the precepts in this field of non-duality, but still there is a sense of a differentiation, you know.

[44:10]

Well, first of all, precepts should be impossible. And the basic idea of that is, I think, most easily understood in the vow to save all sentient beings. Simply, it doesn't make sense to say, I vow to save one sentient being, or three, two and a half, seven. I vow to say seven once, you know, every week I say seven, but not eight. Somebody standing in line, I'm the eighth, save me. No, no, seven is my limit. This doesn't make any sense. So the only way to practice is to vow to save all 13 things. We should have that kind of effort. So we have an effort not to kill, but in fact we kill. So even if you totally try not to kill, you kill. So the other side of that has to be true too. Even if you kill, you're not killing. That's the kind of thinking in Buddhism. And that's to free you from any kind of position.

[45:51]

And to free you from any kind of position is also to follow the precepts. Because if you don't have any position and you act intuitively in every situation, you're probably not going to cause any harm because you're going to be acting in the interest of a large being. So if you can create this state of mind where killing is also not killing and not killing is also killing, it means you've entered a big state of mind where you're operating through a whole being, a great functioning. And through great functioning, we follow the precepts automatically. That's the understanding. The precepts in general, as they're understood in Zen, which in some contrast to the way... Thich Nhat Hanh presents the precepts, and which he finally changed it from calling it precepts to something for daily living or something like that.

[46:56]

Because they became so specific, you could only follow the letter of them. So the general idea in Zen, that's fine. That's a different way of looking at the rules of how we behave. But the sense of precepts is to keep them very simple. And to recognize that really work with not killing, it becomes more and more subtle. So that you're having a conversation with somebody and you see what you said has made them wither. You've killed them. You've just broken a precept because you've made them feel diminished. So the idea in our Zen way of looking at precepts is to keep them simple enough that each one can function in the immediacy of each moment. If it's too complicated, you have to kind of like... But just not to kill, you can feel that in each moment. Or not to take what is not given.

[47:59]

which is, I think, a wonderful way of saying, don't steal, because in the middle of a conversation you can feel you're taking something from this person they didn't give to you. So as soon as you realize you should not take what is not given, a kind of space and patience comes in where you wait for everything. You wait for a rock. If you look at a rock and you say, oh, that's a rock, you've stolen it. If you wait for a rock to talk to you, then you're only taking what's given. So in that sense, as soon as you make something, you're still open. So there's a kind of patience. So each of the precepts is meant to have a kind of dynamic that can be present for you in each moment. That makes sense? Yes. And in that aspect of the dynamic, where does the intention come in? Or how do I work with, let's say... The dynamic is your intention not to kill or not to take what is not given. and to notice when you do it.

[49:01]

If you don't have the intention not to kill, you won't notice when you kill. Only through noticing when you kill do you notice when you don't kill. So it's always this dynamic of which the precepts require being burdened. To follow the precepts requires you to notice when you kill. So you have to kill in order to practice the precept. As a real practice, not a kind of philosophy or something like that, idealism. Well, that's depressing to start off. Let's not let that out. That's what a lot of people think about Buddhism. They'll know they're a kelp then. You have to have the experience of taking what's not given in order to realize that you've taken what's not given.

[50:13]

And you discover the patience to take only what's given. Okay. I mean, I thought we'd go around the room three or four times. Mark's ready, I know. Mark's ready. Well, and I... I hope we have some general discussion, but I guess we don't have time, because it was fun to be here. Sorry my responses were so inadequate, but I loved being sneaky with you. I liked it too. Thanks. Thanks.

[50:54]

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