So we're in another crisis now. So there's a danger and there's an opportunity right now. Well, many, many, many dangers and many opportunities, but one danger I feel is The danger of becoming distracted. I feel the group's pretty settled now. And if we do nothing more but just stay together for the rest of the evening and the rest of tomorrow, we don't necessarily say anything or anything, I think that'd be fine.

[01:20]

A lot would develop. The danger would be to disturb the groundedness that's been achieved so far, in which I feel right now with you here. the opportunities to, you know, raise more issues and become more aware of other dimensions of this, of our anxiety. But in doing so, there's a possibility that you'll become, or that we'll become somewhat, you know, excited by the new frontier that's opened up.

[02:30]

And... you know, lose our grounding. So that's the crisis I feel at this time. A kind of a crisis in in taking care of what we're feeling. So now at this point I would guess that everybody is either feeling some anxiety or is somewhat anxious about not feeling anxiety. Or is feeling afraid, or is feeling afraid that you're in denial.

[03:36]

Because everybody else is afraid but you. And I think some other people are probably anxious and also anxious about not being anxious enough and afraid but not feel like they're really, you know, but they're really hiding what they're really afraid of. I've done a lot of sharing today, and I noticed that the last time I shared, I felt anxiety. Now, right after I stopped sharing, I said, oh, I felt anxiety when I was sharing. In fact, for most of the afternoon, I felt anxiety, and I really can't describe it. It was just a feeling inside, and I was trying to focus in on it.

[04:39]

You know, it was just like you said, that the sharing... You know, I got through my first share, and sharing then the anxiety was there. And it was thereafter too. And it was very uncomfortable. I didn't want to be here. I said, well, I had enough. I think I'll leave. And I'm just sitting there with it and watching it. And it finally, you know, disappeared during the meditation. So, now that I'm more aware of it, what is the best way to handle it? Just to be with it, to watch it while it's there? Has it come back? When it comes back. Has it come back? No. Not yet? No. You want the best way to handle anxiety when it comes?

[05:42]

I think the best way, by best I mean the way that's most conducive to liberation, is to not move and not meddle. Could you say that again? To not move, to not meddle. I think that's the best way. Once you're feeling anxiety, you've already done plenty of work. You've created a sense of self. And you're expressing it. And you're sensing the non-being around you and sensing the threat. of the non-being around you. It's not like you're not moving, like you've moved to some kind of like, what do you call it, guarded suburb, and you're not moving out there, and you're holding onto your TV set and your dog.

[07:11]

Your dog and your TV set aren't here, there's just you being yourself. expressing yourself fully and feeling anxiety or as fully as you can at the moment and feeling anxiety about it you're alive, you're present and you're feeling anxiety now that you've done all that now I think the best thing to do is not move in other words, be like Shakyamuni Buddha reenact the Buddha's practice that's the best, I think just sit still sit still, yeah and experience what happens. What happens if I get on an activity with a bunch of people or I'm out walking around somewhere? Don't move. No, don't move. Find out what it means to not move. Like right now I'm talking to you. It's possible for me to not move while I'm talking to you. And it means don't move from being yourself, from being yourself.

[08:22]

You move from being yourself, you distract yourself from your anxiety. Either moving away from being yourself or trying to, you know, backpedal and diminish your expression. That will be a way for you to mask or distract yourself from experiencing your anxiety. Which I don't recommend that. And if you do recommend, if you do do it, then I recommend confessing that distraction, which will bring you back to your self again, and then just continue sitting still. If you sit there long enough, as I said, I'm telling you, what will happen then is that which you feel assaulted with will start to demonstrate how it's assaulting you, why it's assaulting you, the causes and conditions for its assault, and how it's born of you and how you're born of it.

[09:28]

And the full picture of yourself will start to manifest around you. And finally, without denying or hiding yourself, your self will be revealed. In other words, your self will turn on itself and release you. But not if you're not there. I mean, it's turning and releasing yourself all the time, but if you're not there, you don't experience the release. This is the way to be liberated from anxiety. And not only that, but experience your creative, virtuous, courageous, and liberating self. That would be the final liberating practice. And if you're experiencing anxiety, you have done the work of entering into and being your life.

[10:31]

So you've done that hard work, and now that you've gotten to the center of your life, now you can sit there. and experience the pain. And all the Buddhas are sitting there with you. That's where they're all sitting, in the middle of that anxiety. Now, there's alternatives to that, which aren't so bad. And the one is, objectify your anxiety. And there's different ways to objectify it, which are typical of a particular society or your own personal habit. Objectify it. And then if you objectify it, you can bring up courage and enter into dialogue with it, participate with it, and then you can vanquish the fear, and then you have...

[11:36]

In some sense, that's a way to deal with your anxiety, to keep it from being overwhelming. And it works pretty well. It kind of takes care of it. So you can function pretty well. However, it doesn't liberate you from it. It just quiets it down for a while. In a healthy way. In a courageous way. But more courageous is not to objectify it in the first place, or in the second place, but anyway, not to objectify it, and just stay still and be ready for revelation as to the causes and conditions of the anxiety and the pain, which is self-clinging. Marsha?

[12:40]

I feel now like I don't fit into any of those categories that you just described at the beginning. I feel calm. I feel like I've spent some wonderful time and met some wonderful people. I don't feel any anxiety or guilt about not having any. And it's a state that I'd like to be in, if I can find it occasionally. But for some reason... after the past couple of days, I almost feel like I should be in an anxious state most of the time. So can you address that? Sure. Well, I propose to you that I don't know if you feel more calm now than you did before the weekend, or not. Do you? Yeah. So, I think what happened maybe is that the discussions and the interactions you've had, you've met them and encountered them and settled with them, so now you feel more calm.

[13:51]

And if you feel even more calm, or if you stay in this calm for a while, I would suggest to you that you will open up to a deeper level and there's anxiety down there. And the way to open up to deeper levels of anxiety, I think the most effective and the most effective, the most salutary, the most liberating, the one that goes best with the passive liberation is to open up to feeling calm and relaxed, to gently settle into deeper levels and to be soft and flexible so that when the anxiety is revealed you have a chance to work with it in a good way. so there are there are these times when it's when it's easy when you're not pressed which is it's not if you shouldn't feel guilty about that but what you're going to probably open up to later is anxiety of guilt not guilt not being anxiety but perhaps guilt some other kind of guilt although guilt is not the big thing for this time in history

[15:18]

This is not our specialty. Guilt and fear of condemnation is not heavy in this society right now. Remember when I was a kid, you used to see these movies, like Bergman movies and stuff, you see these people walking along the street and whipping each other and stuff like that, and driving crosses through the streets of Europe. Those parts of the movie, I didn't empathize with that that much. I never got into this self-flagellation and, you know, wearing hair shirts and burrs in my hair and stuff like that. That kind of asceticism never really appealed to me. The kind of asceticism that appealed to me was more, in some sense, streamlined asceticism of Zen. The streamlined asceticism of not moving. Not the heavy-duty, self-mortifying kind of type that goes with guilt and condemnation anxiety.

[16:21]

If you don't have that kind, that's kind of our style at this point in history. We're not into that kind. The kind we're mostly into is this kind of emptiness and meaninglessness. That's like, you find that among our people, especially our young people. They haven't learned yet to not talk about that. So they just, you know... Like one kid says, the main thing they do is they shop for different kinds of interiors on the coffins of their friends' coffins, you know, whether it should be velvet, you know, what is it called? It's... different types of, anyway, there's some terms for the different kinds of interiors of the coffins that they... You mean the teenagers? Yeah. That's the main thing they do for fun, go shopping for caskets, different style of caskets. It's really out there. But this, yeah, this is kind of like, you know, they talk like that, this is kind of an expression of, well, like, talk about meaninglessness, well, here we go, okay?

[17:28]

emptiness that's one of the problems of the Buddhist term emptiness is that emptiness there's an emptiness in our culture that people an anxiety of emptiness in our culture that they confuse with the Buddhist emptiness Buddhist emptiness is that everything is interdependent and nothing exists everything is interconnected and interdependent It doesn't have independent existence. We use the word emptiness for that, but that connects into the word emptiness in our society, which is this kind of vacuity and meaninglessness and spiritual absence that is very present in our society. Where materialism has come in and pushed every spiritual value into retreat. That's the kind that's very common in this society. It's so common that some of us don't even feel it anymore, except maybe when we see children shopping for caskets with a sardonic look on their face. But all these different kinds of anxiety are available to us, but we specialize in one or the other.

[18:32]

One or more are popular at a different time in history. But if you don't feel heavy anxiety right now, it may be that given the present level of your self-expression, you've adjusted somewhat to that anxiety, and when you're more comfortable, you'll move into a more thorough self-expression. Something will occur to you, you know, some new creative aspect of yourself will manifest, and then if you do express it, then this new frontier of self-expression will be met with... You'll be challenged. That self-expression will be challenged, and then you'll be challenged about whether you can be calm with that challenge and settle in with that self-givenness, This challenge, this insult. The word challenge, the French word challenge comes from, you know, challenge, you know?

[19:37]

Slapping the guy in the face and throwing the gauntlet down. But the word means insult. I insult you. Challenge means I insult you. So we are insulted by what is challenging our being. And when you open up a new dimension of your being, of your own being, That's, in a sense, that's an insult. You're insulting the universe to some extent. You're saying, here I am. But you are. I mean, you are. That's the way we are. We do say, here I am. And when we find a new way to say that, we insult the universe. We don't say, by the grace of all of you, now something is manifesting here. We turn it around and say, here I am, you who make me. We drop the who make me. It's rather than, oh, and then there's me.

[20:40]

We don't take that perspective. We say, oh, and then there's you. This is an insult. So then you get insulted back. and then adjusted that and calmed with that and then kind of like, oh, well, I guess I can survive. I got by with it. I got by with being me. At the end of the last workshop, this type of workshop, one of the women came up to me and said, I had a really good time. She said, it's amazing what you get by with. And I thought, that is true, it's amazing what I get by with. So far anyway, I've got by with 52 years of this. Actually, 53 if you count what I did in utero. And also, as I was exiting, I caused quite a bit of trouble. Is that what you're concerned about, a bad color for life?

[21:43]

You know, I hadn't even thought of that until you said that. My mother did survive, though. But then I cried for eight weeks. Non-stop. Because I was starving. Because my mother was breastfeeding me. But she didn't have enough milk for me. So finally the doctor said, he's starving. He's not giving me enough to eat. So they switched me to a cow. What's the karma of that? Crossroad. Now my attendant's trying to take the milk away from me. But it's been a good 53 years.

[22:57]

But still, I've made a lot of mistakes, so I'm getting ready to cope. Basically, my message to myself is, okay, I hope I do well with what's coming, because it's going to be tough. And I hope that I can stay present and not meddle with what comes. and just take it in, bite by bite, and chew my karmic retribution carefully, and just keep going forward in that way. You know, rather than some other spiritual paths that I was involved with, they feel that the bad karma can be nullified before it takes effect by good actions. Because it hasn't taken effect yet. Otherwise there's no choice. It's predestined. Well, Buddhism doesn't say that.

[24:08]

Buddhism says that you can become liberated, period. So that when disease and misfortune come down upon you, you're basically liberated. But if you get into the idea that you can nullify bad karma before it arrives, which some Buddhists have thought that, then they do bad karma assuming that they can nullify it before it arrives. I'll do it and I'll run ahead there and do some good karma and it won't land. And some of them have confessed that they thought that's what it was and they said, and I was wrong. But if you have done whatever bad karma you've done in the past, it is gonna manifest. But if you're liberated when it manifests, it doesn't matter that you're sick and miserable and poor and blah, blah, blah. Some very poor sick people have become completely enlightened. The point is that you can be liberated from the most horrendous negative karmic effects.

[25:15]

if you're practicing good now. So it's similar to what you're saying, but it is different too. It means, if whatever bad I've done in the past, it's coming to get me, its effect's not going to be nullified. But from now on, I have to practice good. And if I do practice good, maybe I'll be awakened. And if I'm awakened, when this stuff starts falling down on me, I'll be able to... It won't really bother me. But it will be just exactly like it would have been anyway. It won't be the least bit different. I will get sick or whatever. The Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, at the end of his life, he got sick. He ate some stuff. There's some debate about what it was, but he ate something and he got sick. And he got sick like you or me would get sick if we ate some bad stuff. He got dysentery. and he got dehydrated and he was in pain, you know, he had a hard time.

[26:19]

But while he was having a hard time and contemplating, you know, whether he, how much longer he would put up with this difficulty before cashing in his physical chips, he kept teaching the most beautiful, subtle and beneficial teaching. I don't even say most, just simply very beautiful, subtle and beneficial teaching kept rolling out of his mouth and coming out of his body and his thoughts. He just continued to be beneficent, wise and skillful in teaching his many, many students, even while he was sick. Some people are healthy, which is swell, but they aren't liberated and therefore they did not teach the way he could teach even while he was sick. His teaching while he was sick, as far as I can tell from my limited knowledge of Buddhist teaching, his teaching while he was sick was no less effective, precious, or wondrous than his teaching when he was relatively healthy.

[27:27]

My own teacher Suzuki Roshi, when he was sick, The teaching that I received from him while he was sick was not the same kind of teaching that he gave when he was healthy. When he was healthy, you know, he did doksan and he did services and he did zazen with us and gave wonderful lectures. He worked on the rocks, you know. He was really quite a delightful little Zen master to hang out with. And he did all kinds of wonderful things. And he leaped about the world in a very beautiful way, and it was wonderful. But when he was sick, he couldn't walk much anymore. He had to give him rides up and down the stairs. He couldn't sit in a zendo much. Finally, he couldn't go there at all. We didn't have the energy to give lectures. No more doksan. He wasn't, like, joyfully leaping about the place anymore. He was just barely getting by, and he was in a lot of pain. But the teaching he gave then was no less penetrating and encouraging than the teaching he gave when he was healthy. In other words, his compassion and wisdom were liberated from the circumstances of his karma coming down on him.

[28:37]

Real heavy duty illness and pain. And he was in pain and he was in pain. No question about it. And he said, my karma is not so good. But the way he dealt with it was very wholesome and very skillful and very wonderful. So, there it is. But karma does not manifest. Now, it's a little bit different the other way around. The effects of karma do manifest. The question is, how do you handle them? Now, the other way around is, how about generating karma in the first place? How about when the conditions for evil and harmful behavior are manifesting? This is different. This is not talking about that karma won't take effect. This is talking about doing the karma in the first place. When the conditions for evil are there, if you meditate on how they're forming and pay attention to them and see how they work, they don't happen in the first place.

[29:46]

So, you know, we don't destroy evil. The conditions for evil are constantly manifesting. And if you watch them and see how they happen, they do not take effect. The evil act is not committed in the first place. However, when you watch the conditions, causes and conditions for good coming together and see how they happen, the good does happen. Because the causes and conditions of good are precisely that actions arise from causes and conditions. When you see that, you naturally allow good to come forth. When you see the same characteristic, when you see the same pattern around evil, evil doesn't happen. So if you meditate in this way, naturally you practice good and refrain from evil. Then, that same practice is the practice that you practice when you're feeling yourself and expressing yourself and feel the causes and conditions and the dependent core arising of your anxiety around yourself. You do the same practice.

[30:52]

And the anxiety doesn't take effect, actually. In other words, it doesn't trap you. You can become free of it. The same practice applied in all these situations of just being present with what's happening, watching how it happens from the position of stillness and quietness. But again, the main point of this workshop is that that position of being yourself is surrounded by dynamic, turbulent, painful, temptation and anxiety and temptation and driving towards fear. All that's around there, it's a very dynamic situation. And given our past karma, we misinterpret it as rather than helping us do our work, as perhaps distracting us from our work. Does this sound familiar? What's your name?

[31:58]

Lorraine, does that sound familiar? Like you hear somebody talking like that for the last couple of days? Is it sinking in? Why is some, some, some? Repeat that last one, please. Karma comes in and instead of detracts from... What did you just say? What did you say? Well, like anxiety. You start experiencing anxiety. Instead of having the anxiety be interpreted as something which is going to drive you away from being present, it all the more... I mean, you feel all the more resolved to stay present. Not stay present in order to cause the anxiety, but in order to be clearer about what the anxiety is and how it arises.

[33:01]

It arises from you being here and being you. In your case, it arises from you being Kathy. Your anxiety does not arise from me being Reb. So, when you feel anxiety around, when you feel like you're expressing yourself and you feel anxiety, then rather than vacate Kathy, or make the anxiety into an object, which you then could deal with in terms of courage and so on, in terms of fear and then courage, which temporarily will allay your anxiety, I'm recommending stay there. Keep being Kathy. Vulnerable Kathy. Vulnerable Kathy because of being Kathy. stay there, be with that, and get clearer, and then instead of seeing the anxiety as something that you should do something about, make into fear, or be less yourself, or whatever, see it as saying, all the more now be yourself, just like Shakyamuni Buddha did.

[34:01]

He said, I'm going to sit still, so then Mars said, oh, you're going to sit still? The demon said, oh, yeah? Okay, well, take this and take that. And Buddha kind of said, all the more I'm not going to move now. I knew this would happen. Whenever anything holds still, everything else around it stands up and starts moving. If you hold still and be yourself, you're going to be tested by all this stuff, and that's the anxiety, and it's somewhat uncomfortable. And also, if there's any structural inefficiency in yourself, all this stuff will get ripped off. And to get pared down to the more and more essential you, and then the anxiety even builds up more, to check out if there's, you know, are there any more subtle structural inconsistencies, and now start pulling on those, and pretty soon, just be this pure self. the essential thing that you can't live without, and then the anxiety will come on that.

[35:03]

And if you can sit there and not meddle with that, it will turn. What do you mean by structural? Well, like your glasses are probably maybe a structural... You know, if I take your glasses away, or I start tugging on your glasses, you feel anxiety about that. Pretty soon I get them off. And then you're a simpler guy, you know. You're down to a more basic Martin without glasses. And I take your money or whatever, you know. And I take your wife and your kids. You know, I give you some wife and kids. It's too much anxiety. Are there any unmarried women here? Oh, good.

[36:05]

Wow. You're a lucky man. Well... I hope that I'll be straight. Unmarried women, you know they're straight. Well, even if you're not straight, for Martin's sake. The man needs to experience more anxiety. I mean, really. Well, that's what I need, right? That's the answer. As long as we're getting practical... with the last three recent comments. I wonder if you would speak to, I hate to be a broken record on Marilee, but I'd like to go fast to some of what she raised this morning with regard to her situation at work, which all of us share in one way or another.

[37:07]

You mean Marilee? Marilee? Marilee. Our Silicon Valley Bodhisattva. Could you say to some of the fears that are really reality testing? Are really what? Reality testing. Yes. For example, I mean, I'm physically afraid if I'm in certain parts of the film or in the dark. Now, that to me is not about my... At some level, it is about my stage and state of liberation. But at some other level, it's a very significant reality. Now, I have a successful, high-powered job, but really I think I want to be a Zen Buddhist monk. But I don't dare leave my work to do that. nor am I quite prepared to leave my family to sail around the world.

[38:11]

And each of us, I think, labors with a multitude of similar choices. And I wonder if you could take a couple of examples and work us through them to help us know if we're making decisions that are really within our integrity or are just sort of ego trips? Ego not in the sense in which you used it last night, but in the sense of personality trips. Is that too confusing or did I...? It's not too confusing to me, but I'd like to register these two different examples that you just raised, and then we can talk about how we can walk through them. Actually, you kind of raised three. Two would be enough. You obliquely raised Mary Lee's situation, which is slightly different from your situation of leaving your job to become a monk, or traveling around the world.

[39:23]

It's a little different from her situation of maybe maintaining her integrity in her situation, so leaving her situation to do something else. So there are three examples. Right, and I'm talking about the anxiety and fear that we confront. in facing these types of decisions. Uh-huh. Okay. And then you sort of raise another general area, and that is decision-making. Okay. Which, I don't know if we'll get to all of them. And then there's another thing which is outstanding, and that is the issue of, you know, what pathological or neurobic anxiety. And I don't know which one is sort of more in the mood of the evening. Decision-making. Decision-making? Decision-making, pure and simple, regardless of which example. So I'm just going to tell you something radical about my understanding of decision-making.

[40:28]

One thing is that, just as I mentioned to you, that it is taught, Buddhist psychology is not like truth, It's more like what the Buddhist meditators have found as a good way to look at your psychological processes in terms of becoming liberated from them. Not so much like we say, this is the way it really is, but rather when they found it's helpful to look at it this way. That their motivation has become free of suffering And by looking at it this way, they've found it conducive to that process. So, they say, for example, that all states of consciousness were always... You may find this to be true too, in other words, you may find it to be your experience, but anyway, they find it awful to say that all states of consciousness involve judgment. We're always, whatever we're experiencing, All day long, this face, [...] this light, this color, this taste, this smell, this touch, whatever we experience as an object of awareness, we always judge it as positive, negative, or neutral.

[41:34]

And neutral sometimes is you can't tell which. We do that all day long. Some people are not aware of this because in some ways it's a little bit subtle, this kind of thing, but you can get into it. Anyway, these are things we do all day long. That's judgment. Another... Omnipresent mental function is what's called decision. We're always making decisions. We're making decisions about what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to. We also make decisions about what to think, what to say, and what to do with our body. We're making decisions all the time. People will ask a lot. They ask, how do you make decisions? I've got a decision to make. How do I make it? My radical response to that is that before you make a decision, you do not make a decision. All the things you do before you make the decision are not decision-making. They're just thinking about the decision.

[42:38]

You haven't made the decision yet. You have not. As soon as you make the decision, that's when it happens, and there's nothing before it and nothing after it. It's over. And you don't make it until you make it. But that's one radical statement I have to make. And you do make decisions every moment. Some people are thinking about making decisions. Well, learn to discriminate between thinking about making decisions and making decisions. Realize that thinking about making decisions is not decision-making. It is thinking about decisions. Another radical statement I would say is you do not have to think about making decisions before they're made. They happen all the time. They're not going to stop happening. You're going to keep making them every moment and you do not have to think about them beforehand. You do not have to deliberate at all about what you decide to do. It's not necessary. It is a habit we have, deliberation.

[43:40]

Next is that a lot of times you make decisions and then the next moment you make another decision which is the opposite of the decision you just made. Also you make decisions and you don't change your decision but although you made a decision you don't fall through on it. Decision making does not really have that much to do with anything. except it basically has to do with what you decide. But it's not what you do. Like you said, you decide, for example, let's decide to be nice tomorrow, shall we? Now you may say, well, I'm not ready to decide that. Well, then you didn't decide it. But you could decide tonight to be nice tomorrow, at least to be nice between 9 and 10. Or between 9 and 9.50. Or between 9 and 9.05. You could decide that. And say, yeah, it's a reasonable decision. I made it. I'm going to do it. and then you go there and you don't. That's another characteristic of decisions.

[44:47]

Decisions do not mean you do what you decide to do. Doing what you decide to do is another function, called, you know, resolve, or determination, or steadfastness, or concentration, or mindfulness. A whole bunch of other things come in there, without which decisions... You know, where you know what happens to you without that other stuff. And yet we're very concerned with making decisions... for a couple reasons. I think one is because we think that making decisions will, you know, guide us in some direction. In fact, that's right, it does. But the thing is, you're making decisions all the time anyway. And does it guide you? Yes, it does. How? What really guides you? Is it your decision making? Well, yes, but then you don't follow through on your decisions. So what... Is it the decisions that are followed by all kinds of resolve and concentration and, you know, harmony among all the different elements of your personality?

[45:48]

Well, yeah, that's more like it. When everything gets lined up with a decision, then a decision starts to, like, be something to do with your direction. But how do you get everything lined up with your decision? Because it might not be a good decision. Or how do you get decisions lined up with everything? Decisions are coming down like this all the time. You don't have time to line up with everything other than just be a decision. How do you get your decisions to line up with where you're actually going? Well, how about deciding where you're going to go? But how are you going to decide where you're going to go? In a big way. So you'll have time to get everything in your personality to line up with it. This is something you will not be able to decide.

[46:52]

You cannot decide where you're going to go. This has to be something about where you're going, not where you decide you're going. It has to go with where you want to go. whether you decide it or not. Which means you have to get in touch with... Clarify that. Whether you've decided to or not. I'm just telling you what you have to do. You have to clarify then that that's correct, what you've been revealed to you about what you want to do with your life. After it's clarified, then you have to figure out how to develop it. Through this whole process, you're making decisions non-stop. They're flying all over the place that you're following or not following. But in the meantime, there's something which you want to do with your life and your decisions you're making are all over the place. And you can also anguish, you could also be agonizing or struggling with these decisions you're making too.

[47:58]

But in the meantime, what you really care about is starting to come forth. continue to make decisions, continue to make decisions, continue to make decisions that will continue to happen. Now, at a certain point, when it gets very clear to you where you want to go, you start to notice that the decisions you're making are not in accord with where you want to go. At that point, again, decision-making does not... starts to become not... well, starts to become... something you're careful about because it has consequences but it's kind of like if you make the decision to live in accord with what you want to do then basically

[49:09]

You're living in accordance with what you want to do. And if you make decisions to do anything else, you basically admit that you made a mistake. That this is a mistake. This is not what you want to do. And you simply admit that this is a mistake. Do you spend a lot of time making decisions in your mind and also making decisions about, you know, what to do? Well, actually, you spend all your time doing it, but you spend it very quickly, because you make the decisions quickly, in the moment. Then you check out whether it accords with what you want to do with your life. If it doesn't, you don't follow through on it. Or you do, but even before you follow through on it, you recognize that the decision is an error. Confess it, you're back on. If you recognize it's an error and act on it, then you make two errors and you admit them and you're back on. If you don't recognize it and you act on it before you notice it's an error, then you just admit both of them at once and you're back on.

[50:15]

Namely, you always bring yourself back to what you want to do. The decision-making, however, is not under control. It's not under control. It's not under control. How can it be? Because as you're approaching it, it hasn't been made, and then when it's made, at the moment it's made, it's over. You cannot prepare to make a decision. Decisions cannot be made beforehand because they don't count beforehand. And they also don't count afterwards either. They're just an illusion in the moment. They're just a twitch in your attention. That's all they are. They're just a preference in your spectrum of experience. That's it. And you can't prepare for it. You can't control it. And as a result, even people who are very clear about what they want to do with their life make decisions contradictory to that. However... if you can learn that decisions happen like this, then you just basically see you're constantly, almost constantly making mistaken decisions.

[51:16]

You're almost constantly deciding to do or thinking of doing things which are not in accordance with what you want to do with your life. So rather than spending your time distracting yourself by trying to make a good decision, which you can do, but which doesn't take any effort and you cannot control, When you make a good decision, that's a decision that lines up with what you want to do with your life. You want to go this way, then here comes a decision. I want to go that way. Here comes a decision, I'm going to go that way. That happens like that. Before it happens, though, it doesn't count. I'm thinking about going that way, but I haven't really decided. This doesn't count. Except in the sense that you've decided to think about it. But when it actually comes time and you decide, I'm going that way, you made the right decision according to your values. That's it. It's over. You couldn't prepare for it. You can't control yourself into it. Okay, control yourself now. Get ready. Here we go. One, two, three. We're going to decide to go in the right direction. One, two, three. And then you decide to go that way. You can't control it. That's why deliberation finally should be dropped.

[52:19]

Because in fact, you don't deliberate. It doesn't count. All the deliberation just washes away when you finally make the decision. As you can see, I'm thinking of doing this, thinking of doing that, [...] and finally you do something back. Never even thought of. One of your considerations and boom, you know. I'm not going to touch her. [...] I am going to touch her. I am going to touch her. I am going to touch her. That's the way it works. Once in a while, you say, I am going to touch her, I am going to touch her, and you do it. Once in a while, it happens that way. But it wasn't because you said all that stuff or thought all that stuff. The only reason why it was that way was because it was that way. You were not under control. So try to control yourself into making the right decisions.

[53:25]

It is not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I say that to you. That's my experience, myself, watching other people and reading books about people over the centuries, that's what I've come to. We are not under control, we are not controlled beings. However, if you can see, not decide, you cannot decide this, if you can see what you want to do with your life, if you can see what you're here for, what you want to be here for, and you say, that's what I want, you don't get to decide that. It comes up and shows itself to you and you say, yes, that's not a decision. That just happens to be where you're at. And that's it. So there it is. Now what are you going to do about it? Well, I want to do it. So then everything lines up with that. Except you're constantly making decisions to do other things. Like I want to be kind to people. Say this nasty thing and that nasty thing and that nasty thing. Take this for yourself, push them away. This is not what I want. These are decisions. Wrong decisions. Wrong decision, wrong [...] decision.

[54:30]

That's part of walking the path I want to walk, is that I notice a lot of times I don't. That's what it's like when you're walking a certain way, is that you notice most of the time you're not going that way. Drive a ship to Japan. What percentage of the time are you pointed to Japan? Maybe never until you get there. You know, Going towards Hawaii, no, correct over now, you know, towards Alaska. Back to Hawaii. There's a second there when you cross between Hawaii and Alaska that you're pointing toward Japan. But most of the time you're correcting for your errors, right? Feedback, back and forth, back and forth. Once in a while you're on card, but it's on your way between one mistake and the other. But you never forget, you don't forget, hey, where are we going again? Japan, Japan, Japan. That's where we're going. That's it, right. That's where I want to go. I want to see Mount Fuji and those Zen temples.

[55:31]

Oh, it's going to be so great. I do not want to go to the Midway Island, actually. That's not where I want to go. I want to go to Japan. I don't forget that. I want happiness and peace for all beings. That's what I want. And so I'm making all these decisions. which are contradictory to that, and I cannot decide or control myself to make decisions. Otherwise, you would decide to be kind, and then you would just decide to be kind. And again, and again, and again. Just turn yourself in. Because wouldn't it be easy to control yourself into doing what you wanted to do, what you deeply, deeply believed in? Wouldn't that be easy to do? You just control yourself right over onto that, and that would be it. You just keep making decisions like that. And a lot of them are not that difficult. It's not kind of like, well, should I buy it? you know, 36 one-cent stamps or one 36-cent stamp. It's not complicated stuff like that. It's like being nice. It's like being kind. It's like, you know, how are you today?

[56:31]

What can I do for you? It's that kind of simple stuff that goes with what you want. It's not that complicated most of the time. Once in a while it is, but then the same thing applies. You cannot decide. in the complicated situations. But you can just make the wrong decision in complicated decisions, just like you can make the wrong decision in the simple ones. Do you follow me? Anyway, that's what I have to say. So we're out of control? Well, it's not that we're out of control, it's just that we're not in control. The opposite of being... the opposite of being... of not controlling ourself does not mean we're out of control. We are operating according to very clear, you know, we're getting a lot of support. You people, I mean, what I do here is not just what I plan to do. I'm doing, you people are not controlling me. Well, you sort of are. But you people and everything else control me, but I'm not in control of myself, is what I mean.

[57:33]

But I'm not out of control. Aren't I behaving pretty well? I mean, relatively speaking, to what I could be doing. Thank you. But it's you that are controlling, not me that is controlling. And I'm not controlling you either. But you're controlling me. All of you are controlling me, in a sense. I'm determined by all of you. You all give me my life, plus all that's beyond you gives me my life. That's the thing, and I'm anxious about that. Ironically, I'm anxious about all the things that give me my life and help me be well behaved. Gretchen? I still struggle with the decision-making, with feeling sometimes overwhelmed, that there are all of these things that I want to do with my life, and it seems that some of them are untoward.

[58:35]

Like, you could maybe find a balance between having a family and a job, and wanting to sail around the world. I have some of those broad desires, the things that I might want one thing, but I also want the opposite. Oh, well, I didn't make myself clear, I guess. I was saying, when you see what you want to do, I forgot to say that that is not a whole bunch of different things. How do you come to that clarity of decision? It's not a decision, it's a revelation. And it comes to you By asking the question, what is most important in my life? What is the ultimate thing in my life? You ask that question. You cannot decide that. But you can decide to ask the question. And if you decide to ask the question, as I said, you won't necessarily ask the question. I'm going to decide to ask that question, people might say, and then they don't ask it.

[59:40]

So that doesn't work. But in fact, asking the question is not deciding to ask the question. Asking the question is asking the question. And if you ask that question, and I ask you that question now, what is your ultimate concern in this life? When you die, what will have been the most important thing that you accomplished in this lifetime? What did you come here for? That's the question. What did you come here for? What did you stay here for? And what did you leave here for? What is the most important thing in your life? Then all the, you know, shipboard romances and, you know, Zen monk trips and all that stuff, taking care of your family, taking care of my family, all that stuff will fall into place under this one thing. There is one, there is a most important thing in your life. It may change. It may change. in its form, it may change in its expression, but there's always, I propose to you, there is a most important thing in your life, and it may not be clear to you. When that becomes clear, then I usually find myself, when people tell me what it is, they may get confused a little bit, but it's usually pretty easy for me to see what goes with that and what doesn't.

[60:47]

And it's usually not that difficult for them either. Although they often do things which don't go along with it in Ayur 2, it's pretty simple once you figure out what it is. And it depends on what it is, though. If your thing is to be world famous and to kill a lot of people, then certain things follow from that. And some people are like that, you know. There's a few. But I think everybody in this room basically has the same ultimate thing. In my experience, most people come to Zen centers, most people come to my classes, other places, have basically the same one thing in life. Thank you. They want a supreme enlightenment. Which means they want to be supremely happy, supremely helpful, supremely kind and skillful, and at peace, and loving and loved.

[62:01]

And many people are afraid and feel anxious to say that. They think they're being too greedy or whatever, it's too highfalutin. But so far, that seems to be what everybody wants. Now, not everybody has realized that they want that for other people before themselves. But, you know, it gets to that as you work on it for a while. But I really, I really don't, I really do not believe that somebody wants just a little bit of happiness. Because all human beings have a little bit of happiness, otherwise they wouldn't be here. If a baby doesn't have a little bit of happiness, he'll check out. But, you know, all you have had a little bit of happiness, otherwise you wouldn't be at Zen Center, not to mention you wouldn't be alive. I know some little babies that have a hard time. We have one living here. You saw her, that little girl was pushing on the cart. She was born at a very hard time. But she was born a human.

[63:05]

And because she was born a human, human beings came to her and loved her. Human beings walked up to her and said, I'll take her. I'll take that kid and I'll love it. Because she was a human. These same human beings would not take a dog that was born addicted to crack. They wouldn't do it. I don't think. they wouldn't even have been asked to do it. We don't have people walking around asking Zen students to take care of sick dogs in the pound. But we, being human beings, human beings care so much about human beings that they sometimes go and ask other human beings to take care of them when their mother can't. So this baby's mother was a crack addict, Couldn't take care of the baby. So the relatives of the baby came and asked some people here. They took the baby and they loved the baby. And the baby's had a hard time ever since it was born. Has a hard time. Has a lot of trouble. A lot of sickness. She's also HIV.

[64:05]

Okay? This baby, and she's spastic, you know? And she's, you know, she's mentally retarded. She's got all kinds of problems. But she is loved. by quite a few people in a very deep and abiding way, which is extremely pleasurable to her, it looks like. She also likes people to give her airplane rides, and she likes me to take my shirt off when I do it. She comes, she says, airplane, shirt off, big body. Huh? Sabrina? Yeah, Sabrina. She didn't act retarded. She was very intelligent. Well, I mean, she's very intelligent, but she's retarded in the sense that, you know, she's almost three years old and she can't talk very well and she can't walk and things like that. She's way behind schedule and stuff like that.

[65:07]

But she's delightful and lovable, and so because she's so lovable, she gets a lot of love. Because she's a human being, people love her, and because of that love, she continues to live. And I'm saying you people would not, unless you're in extremely good health, which is also pretty pleasant. So basically, we don't keep going if it's not that pleasant. Unless, the only reason why we keep going if it's not that pleasant is if we love everybody else enough, which again is very pleasant. So even if everybody's mean to us and we love everyone, we will continue to go on. So basically, I don't know how I got on this topic, but basically that's That's what it's about, is that we're getting something out of this. We're getting some happiness out of this, and most people do not want just a little bit of it. Most people want big-time, big-time happiness, because there's a lot of trouble in the process, for most of us. And some people are just very, you know, kind of like, I don't know what, they're being polite or humble or whatever, and say, I'd like a little...

[66:15]

But I don't think that's true. I think everybody wants max, or in a way, optimal happiness. And optimal happiness is, of course, that everybody would be happy because you know that if you're the only person on the block that's happy, they'll start giving you, you'll feel anxious. If you're the only person on the block. But if everybody on the block, and everybody in the city, and everybody in the town, and everybody in the country, and everybody in the world's happy, you know that, then you won't feel so anxious. Because everybody will be in themselves and everybody will be anxious and everybody will care about happiness and everybody will be caring about other people and the anxiety will drop away and we'll all be liberated. That's what I think everybody wants. They want everybody to be happy so that they can just really go all out and be happy and do whatever makes other people happy because that makes us happy. That's what I think everybody wants. As far as I can tell. And it takes some people a while to get there. And then what goes along with that? Well, it's often quite clear, and sometimes it's not.

[67:18]

Well, in those cases, let's talk about it. But even in the cases where it's clear, we still don't follow through on it, right? So then we confess. I'm sorry. This is not in alignment with what I want to do with my life. That was a mistake. I'm sorry. And I'll try to align myself with what goes with my life in the future. And then the next minute, make another mistake. Make another decision to do something that doesn't go with what you think is... what you want to do with your life. So, there are a few complicated decisions to make in life, I suppose, and I'm willing to help people make those decisions. Like, you know, whether to have a baby or not sometimes.

[68:18]

You know, like, sometimes women come to me, and of course they're coming to me because they're not coming to me because they want somebody to encourage them not to have a baby because they wouldn't need to come to me if they want an encouragement not to have the baby. So they come to me about getting encouragement to have the baby, usually. So I usually encourage them to have it. But then if they say, well, I'm willing to have it, but then the baby might have these problems, you know, then that gets more complicated. And we try to find out more information. What is the likelihood of the baby having these problems? And what would the baby's life be like like that? Could you give a baby who has these problems enough love to make it worthwhile for them? And so we get into it. That's complicated. But basically, the orientation is primarily towards what's best for this baby. Can this baby possibly have a good life? If not, well... And how come not? But again, I don't think I would encourage somebody to have a baby and say, you take care of the baby and you give the baby a good life.

[69:26]

If I'm saying that, talking like that, then I should be on the team. I mean, I should be part of what makes the baby's life possible. I should be supporting the baby and making it worthwhile, too, if I'm talking like that, right? So that's the way I have to be. I have to be one to contribute, too, if I'm talking like that. if somebody's not sure that they can take care of the baby. So in fact, I do say that. I say, well, if you don't think you can do it, well, give it to me. I'll take care of it. And you can have it back later. So far, nobody's done that. But then I don't have a lot of crackheads coming to me either. They might say, yeah, you take care of the baby. I don't want it. And I don't want it back later either. So then I might have... But anyway, in this case, we just have one little baby like that at Greenhouse now. And the mother wasn't the one who came and asked us anyway.

[70:28]

So that's about decision-making. Do you have any problems with that? We can talk about practical example, like, okay, now, see, I'm already a Zen monk, right? So I decided to be a Zen monk, and so I got married to my wife, she knew she was marrying a Zen monk. Whereas when you got married, your wife thought she was marrying a doctor, right? She didn't see the Zen monk hidden behind the stethoscope. So now the question is, I guess the question would be, does being a Zen monk, the reason why you became a doctor, was that in line with your ultimate concern in life? Yeah. And now, would changing your lifestyle be in line with your ultimate concern in life?

[71:31]

That's the question. Would it be? And certainly your ultimate concern in life concerns your family. You want the best for them too, right? So you'd have to talk to them about it. Would they be on the team? Would they support it? Would they support you to make a change in your lifestyle? Would they support the changes in their life that would go with that? That's the question. So that's when it gets complicated, is when other people are affected, and what do they think? So we talk to them about it. The decision is basically to go this path. Now, what goes with that? Certainly talking to your friends about what goes with it is part of what goes with it. It doesn't always mean that everybody agrees with you, even in the end. But it does mean that you open your heart and listen to what they have to say. Sometimes you open your heart, listen to what they say and they support you. Sometimes they don't. But it doesn't mean it's wrong that they don't support you. But it does mean that you really listen to them and you really go with them disagreeing with you.

[72:37]

You take their disagreement with you and you feel like you're taking care of them. In my position, sometimes I'm training people in terms of studying Buddhism. In the case, they talk to me about their decisions that they make. And they sometimes say, I'm going to do this. I'm not even going to do this. I'm thinking of doing this. What do you think? And I sometimes say, no, I don't think so. I mean, no means I don't agree. But that doesn't mean they can't do it. But it means that they have to live with the fact that I didn't agree. No means, no, this doesn't go with what I think you want to do. That's what that means. I don't see this as going with what you say. I see it as inconsistent with what you tell me you want your life to be. That's what no means for me. But still they may not see it that way, and we may go back and forth, and they may say, yes, that's still what I want, but this goes with it.

[73:39]

And I might change my mind, or I might not. But it's much different for them to have I said this to me living with nidus agreement than to not even bring it up. They feel anxiety, you see, in that situation. Because they're really asserting themselves And if I don't disagree with them sometimes, and I don't disagree just to cause it, but in fact, if they don't elicit disagreement from me, they can't feel themselves as clearly as when I do disagree with them and they feel that anxiety and feel their position is not just like doing what I want. They have their own position. And it may come to that in certain areas of our lives, not necessarily with our teacher, but with our family. We may have to disagree sometimes for the sake of liberation, which we dedicate to their welfare. So that's when it gets difficult and complicated.

[74:42]

But not necessarily in these situations, it's not necessarily that you make the wrong decision. But the decision that you make, although it's not wrong, In these cases, the decision you make, although not wrong, is painful. The right decision does not mean that it's comfortable. Most of the wrong decisions are very comfortable. When you make them, they're very comfortable. Vroom, vroom, veer off that way, veer off that way. Very easy, very natural, very comfortable. But some of these... Some of the decisions where you make the right decision, it's very painful. You stay on the beam, and it's not a mistake, and it's uncomfortable. And not only that, but you don't just make it all by yourself. You bring a whole bunch of other people in on it to accentuate your self-expression and to feel the anxiety of their varied agreements and disagreements.

[75:52]

So everybody's in on it, even though not everybody has the same view or opinion. And that's what makes you feel the anxiety. Because you feel the totality of the world converging on this decision. And it feels in alignment with what life is really like. Namely, as long as there's a person here, it's painful no matter what you do. And to make decisions prior to settling into that are these kinds of decisions that are clearly irresponsible and not in line with what you do. So then you Just admit you made a mistake. That's all you have to do on that one. The right decisions, though, you don't admit you made a mistake because you didn't so far. But there, you feel the pain of the decision rather than the pain of the error. You feel this pain of being yourself. And we have to feel that pain in order to be liberated from ourself. But the hard thing is to be present for that stuff.

[77:03]

So, in these examples that you picked, that one example you picked, in your situation at work, to be present with that pain is really the key point. That's really the key point. Like I told this story, some of you have heard me tell this story about one night, for various reasons, my daughter called up and wanted me to come and give her a ride someplace. She had done various irresponsible things to lead me to the position of her asking me for a ride and me saying, no, you get home on your own. She had put her parents through various, you know, running around the Bay Area during the day. And then finally, after we got home, she calls us and asks us to come pick her up. So I said, you can walk home from Fair facts. Not fair facts, it was Larkspur. Larkspur. Yeah, walk home from Larkspur or Quernadera.

[78:04]

Not necessarily walk home or get home, but if you can't get home any other way, walk home. That's what I came to. Anyway, When I reviewed that situation, you know, I felt like I had to draw a line. And she now, what do you call it? My daughter doesn't like tough love, but she likes hard line. I'm a hard line dad. In other words, I draw lines. I say, no, I'm not going any farther. I draw lines. I say, you can't live here anymore without getting a job. you know, one more week to get a job. And then she says she works with those limits. And then, you know, then she does the thing, so far. Yes?

[79:04]

What is the, what does the term tough love mean? Can you give an example? What would be the difference between hard line and tough love? So hard line is, I say, if you don't get a job in a week, move out. Or not, well, not even move out. If you don't get a job in a week, I want you to move out. Who knows whether she'll move out? But I want you to move out if you don't. If you do get a job, I don't necessarily want you to move out. But if you don't get a job after like six months now of this thing, I want you to move out. That's what I want. That's what your dad wants you to do. Live with it. That's what she calls hard line, and I do those hard lines. I've done a few others. like I did on telephone that night, I said, no, I do not want, I said, no, I didn't say, I didn't say, no, I won't. I said, I do not want to give you a ride. And actually she knew when she got on the phone because she called her mother, answered the phone. She said, your father wants to talk to you. So she knew something was up, right?

[80:07]

So as soon as I picked up the phone, she said, what do you want? And she said, what do you want me to do? Either what do you want or what do you want me to do? That was her question. And I said, I want you to get home on your own. So she already was set up that way. The difference between those two cases, those are two hard lines. I haven't told you what tough love is yet, okay? Anyway, Taya doesn't like it, so it's not really relevant. I don't understand. I know, but it's not relevant because Taya doesn't like it. Just kidding. Somebody tell her what tough love is. It's unacceptable behavior where the parent has to draw the line and say, I'm sorry, it's pretty much the same as tough love. And they say, you no longer can be in the house, your behavior is intolerable, and it's causing havoc.

[81:09]

Parents usually... That's what I do. But Taya's got another word for tough love. I'll have to ask Taya what she means by tough love. There's another variety that she doesn't like. So I'll tell you about that. But in these two examples, the one where I said... you have to get a job in a week or move out, or I want you to move out. The other case, I'm not going to pick you up. The difference between those two cases was, in the first one, when she said, what do you want? I couldn't stand the anxiety. I couldn't be there. I said, I answered her question, but I was looking the other way. I couldn't look into the light. I couldn't look into the light of the telephone, of that voice, of that voice of that person that I love so much. I couldn't face that and stay there and answer in that place. I checked out of that place. And that's the problem.

[82:14]

The second case, I stayed in there. And I stayed present and I said, if you don't get a job in a week, I want you to move out. That was the difference between those two. The first one worked out. The second one worked spectacularly. But the first one worked out too. But the difference was I blinked, I hesitated, I chickened out in the first one. Just for a second, but that's long enough. Would you say that the first one, by having her get home on her own, would be hard line, and the second one that you had, where you've told her, there's no other options, it's this or that, would be tough love? No, I thought they were both hard line. I thought they were the same. I thought they were both tough love, from my interpretation of what it is. How did she get home? She called back in a few minutes and said, she said, is it okay if I stay at Susan's house?

[83:26]

And I said, yes. So her friend had given her a ride to the place where she was supposed to meet us and didn't show up and waited for 45 minutes. We waited for 45 minutes after she'd done various other things during the day of not showing up for various other things. And then finally we made that agreement that she'd be there, and then she was 45 minutes late, so we left. And on the way home, I knew what would happen when we got home, that we'd get a telephone call from her an hour or so later, and she'd be asking us for a ride home. She has the gall to do that, right? But I told her mother what she called it. I said, I say what you called it, I don't want to keep you up now. I also don't want to wait out there until she comes, for like two hours or whatever. So I said, I don't want to go pick her up. She said, well, once you call, you talk to her. You tell her that. So I did. At that time, she was 17. How old is she since the job?

[84:28]

She got the job when she was almost 19. I draw lines with her all the time. The most recent one was, I'll give you that money for your travel expenses to school when you make an appointment to have the car fixed that your boyfriend crashed. So she set up the appointment April 1st. Huh? April 1st, the car's going to be fixed at the appointment. The next morning, very efficiently, she had a little piece of paper out there explaining how much money she needed. She's very quick with that. Itemized, all added up, you know. Please write me a check for this amount. So I did.

[85:30]

And the day after she made the appointment, she was getting the money. So that was another line. She responds very well to them. But still, to be present there at the time of drawing, it's very hard. Because this person there means a lot to you and they're bearing down on you very heavy, right? It's kind of like, can you be there? Can you be present with yourself and how you feel when this person which represents so much, it's almost the whole universe, is like bearing down on you with their whole energy to get you to do what they want. And how are you going to be yourself there? That's anxiety. It's not yet fear. I'll just tell you one more thing about this, is that when, between the two telephone calls, my wife told me a horror story. So then you get into the fear, right? But the anxiety is like, nothing's happening, you know, just talking to a person on the telephone, your daughter's sitting in front of you. And you feel, before you even say, before my mouth opens and I talk about, you know, move out.

[86:31]

And, you know, like, is she going to be like in the street? You know, that's fear. But before that, there is just this thing, there is this other person who is like, you know, 500 people in your face. And can you be there? And if you are, you feel this. That's the anxiety. See the difference? Then when you say, then the words come out of my mouth. I'm there, you know, and I'm facing this. This is me. I'm there. Somebody's here, kid. It's your dad, and he's saying, I want you to move out if you don't get a job in a week. You're there, and you're saying that. You're facing that, okay? That's anxiety. Then she says, well, where am I going to move? You know, what's going to happen to me, your baby, you know? Where am I going to live? Will you suggest where I'm going to live? Then you get into fear if you start talking about that. But I said, that's the point, is that I'm not going to figure this out for you. That's the point. It's not like, move out and then I'm going to go get your apartment now.

[87:32]

Are you afraid that in the future, since there you had a confrontation? What? Since you had a confrontation there. Yes. And you won. I won? No, I didn't win. Well, no, as far as she's concerned, you know, as far as she's concerned, you won. No, no, no. She didn't say it that way. Are you afraid that whatever resentment was left from that confrontation, you will have that karma in the future? I will have bad karma if what I did was what I think would be unhelpful to her. If I did anything there that would be unhelpful to her, then I believe I will get trouble for that. In the first example, the thing I did wrong that was not good, which I got in some trouble for, at least for a few seconds there, the horror of what might happen to her, was immediate retribution for me not having the courage to face the anxiety I felt talking to her.

[88:36]

That was my error. The second time I was almost perfect. And then the next morning, we got up in the morning. She almost never gets up in the morning. Nine o'clock, I said, you want to get up? And she said, yes. She got out of bed. I said, you want to go look for a job? She said, yes. I said, I'm going to San Francisco. You want me to give you a ride so you can look for a job? She said, yes. She almost never talks like that. And she wasn't like beaten down. She was like cheerful. She's almost never cheerful in the morning. And then she even asked me about what she was wearing. She said, you like this sweater? She almost never asked me to consult any stuff. Then we went in, and I went swimming, and she took my car to go, I didn't know what she was going to do, you know, show her boyfriend around. She didn't say she was going to look for a job.

[89:38]

When I got out of the water, she was sitting in the waiting room where I go swimming, their leg popping up and down saying, well, I got a job. So then we drove off and she said, do you think that I got this job because of what you said last night? And I said, I don't know. That's a politically correct answer. So the second one I felt pretty good. I was almost completely present with the anxiety of this person. The first one I turned away for a little bit. And in that turning away, she might have got hurt because my wisdom was not present. And I might have said no without being present. And she might have got hurt because of that. I did want to draw a line. but it might have been the wrong line because it wasn't there.

[90:40]

The line you draw like this might be the wrong line. It can be a big problem. The second time I drew it, I almost... We're there together, you know, and she went... So the second one worked really well, the first one. And so I probably... And I did get in... I got in big trouble for that for the time between those two telephone calls. So shall we adjourn? Last night, some people did your homework, I know. So I hope you continue doing your homework tonight, through the night. And I hope you can also sleep.

[91:22]

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