I heard an echo of Barry's voice. I heard Barry's voice again, where he said, I really enjoy seeing how you enjoy saying the same thing over and over. And then I thought, later I thought, yeah, it's like I enjoy going to Holy Communion over and over. The same Holy Communion. It's a pleasure. Huh? That's what inspires me. It's the pleasure you take. Yeah, it's a pleasure. It's a joy. And it's a joy even if it's painful. I also thought it's like Does Eucharist mean feast? What does Eucharist mean? Anyway, it's also like a feast.

[01:02]

We get together and have a feast. And speaking of feasts, Linda did some research on the, the ending or the waning, the decline of the Buddhist practice in India and she's willing to make her research available to you guys, right? How can they get that information? I just do it electronically via Charlie. Do you have... Charlie, do you have people's email? You have everybody? So if we forward it to you, could you send it to everybody? Okay. Is there anybody who does not want to see this research? Huh?

[02:05]

Huh? So if you don't want to see it, tell Tracy. How's that? Is that okay? What? So, is that okay if we forward that research? Just the people here tonight, because we don't know about the people who aren't here. But we can tell them that they can contact you if they want. How's that? I'll send them to you if they want it. Another kind of news item is that one of the people in the class, her name is Lynn, she sent me an email telling me that one of the other people in the class, named Fran, who told me last week that she wouldn't be here, and she's not, Lynn wrote to me to tell me she wasn't going to be here either.

[03:24]

But she also told me that Fran told her that I said that without conversation, there's no Buddha. And I don't know if I said that, but I agree. Without conversation, there's no Buddha. And there is Buddha, I say, and so there is conversation. Waking up to conversation is waking up to Buddha. Could you turn the light up a little bit more, please? Could you turn the light up a little bit more? Thank you. Another news item. from Sunday at Green Gulch. Were you a question and answer?

[04:25]

Anybody else there for question and answer at Green Gulch? I was there. And I forgot what the initial question that this big young man asked me, but anyway, he was asking me questions. one after another, very enthusiastic. I was really enjoying it. And I said to him that I was listening to his cries and he said, I'm not crying. I'm not crying, he said. Then I said, well, to me it seems like you're crying. He said, I'm not crying. I said, well, it seems like you're calling to me. I'm not calling to you. I said, it seems like you're calling for my compassion. No, I'm not calling for your compassion. I just want to understand. Please help me understand.

[05:29]

And then he asked more questions and I responded. And I kept saying, again, you know, it seems like you're calling for my compassion. And he said, well, compassion, the problem with compassion is like compassion for something other. It's like something separate from you you feel compassion for. And I said, well, maybe so. And he said, and the separation is not real. And I said, I agree. But I said to him, you won't understand that the separation is not real without practicing compassion towards the separation. And they said to me, are you calling for compassion? And I said, mm-hmm, and everybody laughed, including him. I don't know if at the end, or we talk later, I don't know if he actually in the end opened up to the possibility that he was calling for compassion.

[06:39]

I don't know. But I think we are. Even Buddhas are calling for compassion. They want us to practice compassion because they want us to open to and awaken to. They want us to open and watch the demonstration and awaken to wisdom. They want us. That's what they want. And so they also want us to practice compassion so we can open to wisdom. true wisdom emerges, lives with, lives in the middle of great compassion.

[07:40]

That's where it lives. There can be some wisdom without practicing much compassion, but great, true, deep wisdom lives in the middle of great compassion. So that's the news. And I have a little question for you. Where does the knowledge of ultimate reality live? I've got the call to you. What? Yeah, in conversation. And in particular, it lives in conversation between Buddha and Buddha. And I think I said last week, the real Buddha is a conversation.

[08:58]

Did I say that last week? This teaching also I mentioned, maybe I didn't, that only a Buddha together with a Buddha, only a Buddha in conversation with a Buddha, can understand ultimate truth. So an implication of that is that even a Buddha by herself, you know, which is a conversation, even that conversation by itself, which couldn't be by itself because it's in conversation, but I guess even if a person was having a conversation with herself and was a Buddha, you know, was a Buddha, even that Buddha's perspective could not actually understand ultimate truth of all things.

[10:25]

No one perspective can understand the whole, the infinite truth of things. And it's not because something, anything wrong with the perspective, it's just that everything is an overflowing, giving and receiving conversation. So the only mode of understanding the way things are is to be in accord with the way things are and to join this constant, never-ending conversation. Also, I've been telling you because Buddhas have been telling me that you, we, will become Buddhas.

[11:40]

And, in a sense, we already are. Of course, we're not a Buddha like some Buddhas. All the other Buddhas are different for us, except they're not. The way we're already a Buddha is that we're already a conversation, which is what Buddhas are. And Buddhas are telling us, yes, you're already a Buddha because you're already the way things really are. You're like that too. Nobody's not the way things are.

[12:44]

And everybody's the way things are in this particular way. And everybody's a particular, unique, in-the-moment conversation. And the way you're that way is the way you're already a Buddha. And that way that you're already a Buddha is in conversation with some beings who are Buddhas in a different way. Like who can discover the Buddha Dharma when nobody tells them about it. Like the historical Shakyamuni Buddha. That's the kind of Buddha he was. We are not that way. We heard about it. We're receiving the teaching that's been transmitted for 2,500 years. We didn't come up with it on our own. But there are Buddhas who come up with it on their own, where nobody else has been telling them. We will become a Buddha like that someday.

[13:47]

Now we're Buddhas like this. And we are in conversation with all the other Buddhas, with all the different types of Buddhas. who are going to become, who are going to keep evolving indefinitely, but are already Buddhas, because you're already, just like a Buddha, you're already a conversation. You're already nothing in and of yourself. You're nothing by yourself, just like a Buddha. And the way you're nothing in and of yourself is different than the way everybody else is nothing in and of him or herself. We're all uniquely nothing in and of ourself. The way we're a conversation is kind of the same thing as saying that we're nothing in and of ourself.

[14:51]

Now, one of the kind of differences, well, I won't get into that yet, but anyway, I'll just say that I asked you where the knowledge and wisdom of ultimate reality lived, and one person said, in conversation, right? Now, where does knowledge of conventional reality live? Where does that live? Yeah, it lives in samsara. It lives in birth and death. It lives in what we might call, what I call consciousness. So I don't, the mind, the mind, where the knowledge and wisdom of the Buddhas lives, that mind is a conversation.

[15:59]

The conversation is a mind. And also, consciousness is a conversation too, but it doesn't usually understand that. So consciousness, or as Vivien did, your head sort of, Consciousness is, again, where the headquarters is. Consciousness is the problem center, or you could say the problem-solving center, which is a, you know, That's a pretty cool thing that we have a problem-solving center. We have a mind which can solve problems, which can make all kinds of wonderful scientific and cultural and artistic discoveries, and then reproduce them in the physical world.

[17:00]

It's a wonderful mind. However, and it understands conventional truth. Like language is a conventional truth. It understands language. But it doesn't understand how it's a conversation. The conversation is the understanding of the conversation. So I do have an understanding of the conversation, and you have an understanding of the conversation, but that's not the conversation. That's just my egocentric, conscious awareness of it. So we have, in a sense, we have three minds, unconscious mind, the conscious, egocentric consciousness, which understands conventional truths like language, and it's where we're going to solve the problem of how to practice compassion and have conversations about compassion until we understand that we're a Buddha, that we're a conversation, and that we're nothing in addition.

[18:28]

We're nothing in addition, completely nothing in addition to a conversation. which means we're nothing in addition to being nothing in and of ourself. We're not like nothing in ourself plus something in and of ourself. We're nothing fixed, we're nothing graspable, but in our consciousness we see fixed, graspable things. We have a tendency to project that. Yes, how do I know that I'm practicing, that I'm doing the practice, not just ensnared in the conventional world forever and not really practicing?

[19:29]

Well, maybe I shouldn't say how you know. Maybe I should say how I know. Maybe I should say how I know that I'm practicing. The way I know that I'm practicing is practicing. I do not know that I'm practicing. I may think I'm practicing, but me thinking I'm practicing is again just thinking in my consciousness. And my thoughts about my practice are not my practice. And if I know, but if I think, and if I believe my thoughts about what my practice is, and if I believe my thoughts that I am practicing, then there's stress.

[20:33]

But stress Pain. Then there's, excuse the expression, it's a strangulation of life. To believe that your life or your living practice, to believe that is what you think it is, is disrespectful and does it a big disservice. So I may think I may think I know that I am practicing, and that is a delusion. A delusion. So I'm capable of that. I'm capable of thinking I'm practicing. But I might not fall for that very often. I might think, oh, Rev just thought he was practicing. And then someone might say to you, did you just think you, and someone might say, did you just think you were practicing? And I might say, oh yeah, I did. And I said, do you think, do you know that you were?

[21:37]

And I say, I'm not gonna go that far. To say I know I'm practicing, but I did just think I was. Also, did you just think you weren't practicing? Yeah, you're right, I did. Do you know that you weren't? I'm not gonna go that far. Did you just think that I wasn't practicing? Sorry, yeah. Do you know that I wasn't? I'm not going to go that far. I don't know that you're not practicing. Did you just think I was practicing? Yeah? Do you believe that? I don't believe... I believe that you're practicing, but I don't believe that the way you're practicing is me thinking that you're practicing. I don't believe that. So the way you know you're practicing is practicing. That's why we need to practice, because that's the only way to know it. And the way you know you're practicing is through conversation.

[22:44]

The conversation, like the way you know you're dancing the tango is called the tango. It's not called thinking that you're a tango dancer. Like some people think they are, some people think they aren't. And some people think they're doing the tango. But the person isn't doing the tango. The tango is the dance between the person and another person. That's the tango. It's not what the two people think they're doing. So the way you know that you're practicing is called No. The way you know it is the way you know it, the way you verify it, the way you realize it is by the practice, which you cannot do by yourself. And any practice that you think you can do by yourself, that's not practice. And the practice that you don't do by yourself is practice,

[23:51]

and it's happening right now. You are doing a practice not by yourself right now. We are now doing something not by ourselves. We are now doing something together. The together is the practice. Not the me, not the part I'm doing and the part you're doing, but the part we're doing together. Not the part I'm doing that's not including the way you're doing it, but the what I'm doing that includes you and the way you're doing that includes me, that's what we're doing together. We're mutually including each other already, and that's what knows the practice. Because again, the knowledge, the actual knowledge of reality of the practice of reality is a conversation.

[24:54]

It's a dialogue. It's not even a Buddha by herself does not know that she's practicing the Buddha way. The Buddha by herself can know. I just had a thought. Yep, there was a thought about practice. And the thought was, I'm doing it. That's all it was. And that thought is not practicing by itself. Did you hear that? He said, great question, thank you. As long as you understand that reality is by yourself, then you're practicing. Would you say that again? You're sitting zazen by yourself? Yeah. Like if you went, where would you go to be by yourself?

[25:55]

In a cave. Oh, in a cave, yeah. That's a good place. Or in my living room. Or in your living room. Okay. So, we have this person, I mean, we have this word called bodhidharma. which is the name we give to the person who founded the Zen tradition in China, and he practiced in a cave, and he faced a wall for nine years. Was he by himself? No. Did he think he was by himself? No. I think some people who walked by thought he was. They looked in and said, what's he doing in there all by himself? What's he doing in there practicing not together with me?

[26:57]

What's he doing in there not in conversation with me? Bodhidharma's in there listening to the people outside crying to him. He's looking at the wall, listening to people saying, he's all by himself. But he's in there listening to the people who think he's by himself. And some of them call to him and say, come on out. But before he comes out, he's already practicing with them. That's what he's transmitting. He's transmitting the mind of what? Of Buddha in conversation with Buddha, and you in conversation with Buddha, and you in conversation with your living room. When you're in your living room, you're having a conversation with your living room. That's why you call it living room. And somebody said, well, your living room is not calling to you.

[28:09]

Are you calling to your living room? Is your living room calling to you? When you're in your living room, you're having a conversation with your living room, you're not alone in your living room. You're never... When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don't be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm, there's a golden light and a sweet fragrant song of a lark. Walk on!

[29:15]

Walk on! You'll never walk alone. It's the point. You'll never sit in your living room alone, and you'll never sit in your cave alone. However, some people might come into your living room and say, what are you doing here all by yourself? And when they do say that to you, you say, well, I'm not by myself. And they say, yes, you are. And you say, well, what about you? Oh, well, before I came. But people come up to us, look us in the face and say, what are you doing alone? They do. How come you're alone? Why don't you relate to me? Good question. However, The mind that understands that is the mind of the conversation. The mind that doesn't understand it is the egocentric consciousness.

[30:19]

However, if the egocentric consciousness can ask questions, that is call, it can be listened to, and it may wake up to the fact that when it calls and says, I don't see that I'm in a conversation, it may notice that it's just entered a conversation. And suddenly now it wakes up to that there is a conversation. And then it's released from this enclosure where it does not see all the time that it's calling, that it's listening, and that it's being listened to and called to. We can wake up to that, but the waking up is not the consciousness. but how it liberates us without getting rid of the consciousness. And then we can demonstrate that this limited view, which doesn't understand, is actually nothing in and of itself and is in conversation with what does understand.

[31:27]

Yes? Are you talking about Rumi? So he says your beauty together with gentleness conquer the world. And what popped in my mind in response to that was that in the somewhat ancient times there was this very large Arab army. Arab army. You could also call it a Muslim army or army of Islam. And it conquered what we call Saudi Arabia, it conquered

[32:41]

the Middle East, it conquered Turkey, it conquered Syria and Persia, it really conquered a lot of area, but it couldn't conquer Turkestan. And the army gave up. It stopped trying to conquer Turkestan, which is sort of in the Middle East, I mean, Central Asia. Couldn't do it. Backed off, gave up. So then they sent in the saints. Oh, when the saints come marching in. It sent these tender, loving yogis. And they conquered Turkestan for Islam. They converted Islam by tenderness. The armies couldn't. And the armies didn't really conquer, they just conquered the land, and then they could, after they conquered, they could offer the teaching, which is not an army.

[33:51]

Yes? How does the conversation relate to stillness and silence? How? Well, he said, how does the conversation relate to stillness and silence? He said, how does the conversation, or you could say, yeah, how does the conversation relate to stillness and silence? I think we need, most of us need stillness and silence in order to understand the conversation. Like if, I don't know, if you all went over to Tracy's living room, then it might not be so silent there anymore.

[35:10]

Anyway, we need stillness, silence, and we need being alone, actually. We need solitude, stillness, and quiet in order to wake up to the conversation. Now, you may think, oh, I'm having a conversation. And if you think you're having a conversation, that's correct. However, your thought about what the conversation is is not the conversation. So I think I'm having a conversation with Tyler. And do you think you're having a conversation with me? Yeah. But my idea of our conversation isn't the conversation, and neither is yours. The conversation includes everybody, including our ideas, but it's none of our ideas. So my idea of the conversation we're having might not hold up when I go back to Green Gulch and you go to your house.

[36:15]

I might think, well, no, I'm not having a conversation with Tyler anymore. I might think that, but probably won't, but somebody might. So, sometimes we do understand we're having a conversation, but our understanding is limited. We think it's going on now, but now it's not. It's always going on, and we need to practice solitude and silence and stillness, or silence and stillness in solitude to wake up and understand what conversation is. And the other way around, which is we need conversation, And we need conversation to understand what solitude is and what stillness is. You may think, I know what stillness is. But without conversation, you do not know what it is.

[37:16]

It's not your idea of stillness. Stillness is also a conversation. So yes, we need silence and stillness in order to understand conversation. which means to become free of our egocentric understanding of what a conversation is. And vice versa. We need conversation to understand stillness. We have ideas of conversation, we have ideas of stillness. Both of them are conversations, they're not our ideas. And we need to alternate between them. So bodhisattvas who are totally into working with beings, they need solitude in order to understand what it means to work with beings. And vice versa, they need to work with beings in order to understand solitude. So they're both living in solitude and in conversation. That's why I said during your sitting, Buddhas are sitting in stillness and silence in conversation.

[38:21]

So I just wanted to ask you to talk more about conversation. You used the word, and I sort of feel like everybody really understands what you're talking about. But could you just talk some more about it? I mean, just what you mean, or other words, or especially not with people. Or dialogue? But I mean, another word for it is dialogue. So, what pops in my mind is, a lot of things are coming now. Because, we don't usually call you a flower, but you ask me that question, and all this stuff's happening in me. Before I even talk, all these thoughts are coming up. A conversation is going on before I even have a chance to talk to you about it. And part of what's coming up is a story. One of the first things I heard Suzuki Roshi say that shocked me was, when you look at a flower and you say it's beautiful, that's a sin.

[39:41]

When I look at a flower and I have a thought, it's beautiful, I'm having I'm not noticing that I'm having a conversation with it. I'm not noticing that I'm having a conversation with it. I'm missing out on this intimacy. I'm being disrespectful of my relationship. I'm just projecting my ideas on it. But then, all right, so that's what it's not. No, that is a conversation. And it's a conversation where, but I'm limiting it to my idea. I thought, I'm having this conversation with the flower, and then, oh, you say, and that's what it's not. Well, what it is is it includes the flower having a response to me that's different when I think it's beautiful than when I think it's something else. Whatever I think of the flower affects the flower, is included in the flower,

[40:49]

The flower feels, if I believed what I think about the flower as the flower, the flower is hurt. The flower feels pain. Because the flower feels that I'm being disrespectful. It still is a conversation, but it's a disrespectful one. Here's another one. But this is like, Somebody, I won't tell you who, invited me to go down to the garden at Green Gulch and smell roses. Sometimes we have a variety of roses in the garden. And she invited me to go down and smell them. She didn't say, I invite you to go down and have a conversation with the roses. I actually named somebody who works with plants, a conversation of flowers. Anyway, I went down, not too interested in having this interaction with the roses.

[42:00]

Sorry, I wasn't. But I went. And I went up to the rose, rose number one, and I smelled it. And I did smell something. Then she said, smell this one. And I did. And then I smelled another one. And then I smelled another one. And, you know, my resistance started to wane a little bit to spending my life smelling roses. But also something started to happen to me, you know. I started to get very, I started to feel very awake. And I started to notice the difference between the roses more and more. After a while, at first they were kind of all the same. And then gradually they became more and more different. And I became more and more kind of alive. That's a conversation with the rose. What?

[43:04]

Do I really mean it has hurt feelings? Do I really mean that? Well, if I said Bernard has hurt feelings, would I really mean that? Well, there is a debate in Buddhism about whether Non-humans are what we're talking about with sentient beings. But you know, Buddhism evolves, and maybe it was kind of narrow-minded back more than a thousand years ago. Maybe they thought dogs weren't sentient beings and didn't have feelings. Maybe they thought that, I don't know.

[44:12]

But maybe they did. But to me, when I look at a dog, especially when a dog's sleeping, It looks like dogs having dreams, and scared in their dream, and angry in their dream, and trying to defend themselves in their dream. They seem a lot like the sentient beings we call humans. Also, I have a little bit of study of chimpanzees, and the stuff they're into is very embarrassing, because it kind of reminds us of how selfish and dishonest humans are. They're really into a lot of tricky stuff, you know, they seem to be sentient beings. As I meditate this way, and my sense of where the sentient beings are starts to expand, and it starts to expand into the roots of redwood trees, which seem to treat the roots of other redwood trees somewhat differently than the roots of themselves.

[45:15]

They have these tiny little roots down there, and they can tell the difference between their own tiny little roots and the neighbor's tiny little roots, and they act differently. It's almost like they have a self in their roots. So I don't really... I'm having trouble, like, drawing a line. Now I have a brain which is connected to a conscious process which can draw lines and it can send these stories of lines drawn, boundaries, up into consciousness. I have this equipment, but as I study it, this equipment seems to be kind of like a by-product of a biological imperative. of reproduction of a particular genetic material.

[46:19]

And it can be closely associated with this selfishness. And the selfishness is closely associated with not understanding what the self is. So I'm having trouble actually believing any boundary that I put on where feelings and where suffering can end. Which is similar, if I could say, it's similar to putting any boundary, yeah, if I can't put boundary on where suffering ends, then I also can't put boundaries on where suffering ends with me. So that would lead me into a situation where there's no boundary to suffering. Like, you know, I can't get away from it. If I can't stop its pervasion, I can't stop it pervading.

[47:24]

I'm asking about living beings. I couldn't tell if you were saying about non-living beings. Is there a difference between living beings Oh, like a rock or a cup? Is there a difference between me and Bernard? Yes, but I'm saying, is there a difference between me and Bernard? Is there a difference? Sure, no. Same with a cup. Same with a cup. Sure. Sure. Sure. No, it's the cup. The cup is a conversation. Did you say something about making a distinction between different types of suffering?

[48:50]

In a way, making a distinction between different types of suffering is like making distinctions between different types of beings. That's what I was just saying. Is there a distinction between you and me? Yes and no. We're different, and we're the same. We're both conversations, and actually, I include you, and you include me. We're in that conversation. I'm a conversation, you're a conversation, and we're in conversation, and we can distinguish between the two of us. Right? And your pain and my pain, we can distinguish between. We can do that. One time I was in the hospital, and my leg was broken, And I was in the hospital and people came to visit me and one of them people said, are you in pain? And I said, well, no. The person down the hall is in pain. Do you hear her? She was crying.

[49:51]

She was wailing. She wailed and wailed in all different... I could distinguish between hers and mine. It seemed like hers was the kind that makes you scream like 24 hours a day. So that's different. Mine, I wasn't screaming at all. So we do have differences, and these differences you can detect in the Colluten Control Center. And all those differences which we're observing, like this is more suffering than that, that discrimination and this discrimination, they're both calling for compassion. Everything's calling for compassion. It's not like we say, we don't pay attention to the distinction between pigs and fish when they're caught. We do. I mean, some people do. They notice. Pigs scream much louder than fish, usually.

[50:54]

But somebody else, I just heard on the radio today, what would it be like if you could hear a star? Because you can't hear stars because there's no way for the sound to get, you know, to move your ear. But if you could put an atmosphere around a star, what would it sound like? I think I didn't hear the answer. But anyway. I think any distinction you make is an opportunity for conversation, and is a conversation. So I have difficulty saying that... I don't have difficulty saying pigs seem to scream louder than fish, or seem to scream louder than when you mow the lawn, you cut the top of the grass off. And also, if you cut Kathy's hair, the tips of the hair, that's different from, like, pull the hair out, right?

[51:56]

So we notice these things, and these things are calling to us to pay attention to with compassion. I don't see a place where the compassion would stop, where I would say, the cup doesn't deserve compassion. I don't see it because the cup is just like me. It's a conversation. And so in Zen, actually, one of the things about Zen and certain schools of Zen is we act like cups were like precious. We touch them like we're touching, you know, a fragile friend. We pick them up. as though we're picking up our own eyes. We put them down. And there's teachings like that. Treat the cup like you're handling your own eyeballs. We don't say, okay, be nice to middle-aged people, but not babies.

[53:02]

But some people do. They say, well, you can be nice to babies, but when they get to be teenagers and they weigh 300 pounds, you don't have to be nice to them anymore. So be nice, be kind, be gentle up to this age, and then take a break. And then when they're really old, start again. The more I look, the more I don't see a limit to what deserves respect. And it seems like that path of respecting everything, cups, dogs, trees, flowers, humans, all humans, all animals, it seems like that path is similar to the path which accepts that all the suffering, whatever it is, is something I can't get away from. Buddha cannot get away from the suffering of all beings, and Buddha is not like saying, well, okay, those beings are suffering, and no, that one isn't.

[54:10]

But some, in the history of Buddhism, maybe some people said, well, they even say, like I said, it's the humans that are suffering, the animals don't count. Some people said that. So I'm just saying, I'm not saying they do, have feelings, but I do feel like, in a way, they're just like me, just like you're just like me, but you're also different from me. Yes? Well, I was just thinking that it could be a little confusing if we just say, well, everything is calling to us, and everything is a conversation we're trying to improve. be in that kind of silence that you were talking about, that makes it possible to hear the conversation, and we're also able, at that time, to have some understanding of a response.

[55:17]

You know, like, say you fell down and your leg was broken and you were on a sidewalk, I wouldn't say, excuse me, I'm busy relating to this cup. that I know will help you break your leg, and I don't get obsessed with the cup I was talking to you about. So if Marjorie fell down and her leg broke, and just before that happened, you were taking care of this cup, and you didn't want to relate to Marjorie, I might say, Linda, could I borrow that cup for a second? And you'd say, And you might say, what for? And I would say, so you could help Marjorie. And you go, oh, I didn't notice. And you might say, I think I was a little bit too much into the cup.

[56:18]

So sometimes we're in a conversation, but we can get help being more wholehearted in it. And then from there, we make the appropriate response. And we can start caring for, we can be in a conversation and be caring too much for, one element in it, and caring too much for one element tends to, yeah, make it hard for us to see the whole, you know, participate in the whole thing. And part of our practice is to notice when there seems to be an imbalance, that we, people pointing out to us when we're caring too much about some element in the conversation. By the way, when I did fall off the bicycle, in Houston and hit the sidewalk. As soon as I hit the sidewalk, I was lying on the sidewalk and this car pulled up full of these women. And they said, do you need any help?

[57:22]

And I said, I don't think so, but would you stay there for a minute? Yes. They were driving, you know, but still they could stop and help me. So when we sit quietly and experience stillness, there's a better chance for us to develop a more intuitive situational awareness, is that right? Yes, there's a way for us to wake up to the infinite dimensions of conversation. Well, the cup versus the cup. I got skin in this game, Marjorie on the ground, right? So, a little bit more likely to notice Rev on the ground than precious teacup. Maybe. If they're both happening at the same time. Maybe. I don't know exactly how it goes, but what I'm proposing is that the appropriate response comes from the

[58:26]

full, wholehearted conversation, that you don't have to figure out whether you should... Which is better heard, the full conversation in the stillnesses? The full conversation in the stillness, from that place, you will figure out what to do with the cup and the person. And you might bring the cup to the person, you know, and say, is this of any use to you? You say, no, put it down. Or they might say, yeah, that's just what I need. Who knows? But you're no longer operating from your self-consciousness. You're operating from what you're doing together with everyone. Yes? It seems to me that when you find this stillness, you are more able to both, and both the mind consciousness, the awareness, and the everything at once.

[59:45]

That the stillness helps with the integration. And you made these gestures and I thought, well, you're gesturing towards the conversation. Stillness helps us open to the conversation. like you're sitting facing the wall, you know, and you're, I don't know what the word is, you're remembering stillness, you're not making yourself still, you're just accepting the stillness of your life, and a fly lands in front of your face. And you wake up to a new relationship with that fly. Suddenly you feel like, I never thought a fly would be my best friend. But you sort of wake up to, yeah, well, it's not like a person, but suddenly, I'm not limiting, saying, well, flies are not important, and I can squash them. You wake up to a new possibility with flies, because of the stillness.

[60:51]

You wake up to a conversation with the flies. And similarly, if you think you know about flies, well, that's fine. But if you really want to know about flies, you should also practice sitting still. Because you'll have revelations about flies and people. Your revelations about your relationships will be enhanced, will be deepened by just being yourself in stillness. being pervaded, like that, by not putting limits on your relationships with things, that you were able to pervade, I think you were saying, that you were able to pervade all of those things. It's not that you pervade everything, you open to it.

[61:57]

You already pervade everything, but you're open to it. So one of the opportunities of being still is to open to how you're pervading and how you're being pervaded. It's not like then you pervade. You're already doing it. You wake up to it. You're pervading enough already. You know, infinite pervasion is enough. Thank you. And you're also being pervaded infinitely. That's enough. You've already got enough of that going on. But you can wake up to it more and more. And one of the ways you wake up to it more and more is by remembering that stillness. Because you being you, you being just like you are, is what's pervading. And so you allow yourself to completely be yourself right now, that allows you to wake up to how this person being just like this in no other way is pervading everything, because everything went into making you just like this.

[63:03]

So it isn't like we pervade more. or a pervaded more. It's just like being still, we open to it. And I also just wanted to say that Suzukiro, I've told this to you before, but Suzukiro, she said Zazen is a great tenderizer. So being still, not, I take it away. Making yourself still is not Zazen. Zazen is celebrating your stillness. You already are still. You're completely unmovingly this way and this way and this way. Each moment we are still in being just like we are. Accepting that and remembering that we become very tender towards our interlocutors like a fly on the wall or like the wall. We become sensitive to the fragility of the wall

[64:05]

and the fragility of the fly. And when we start to see fragility, we see preciousness, preciousness of cups, preciousness of flies, preciousness of people, preciousness of teenagers, middle-aged people, babies, old people, all of our feelings. They're all precious. It's all precious. and being still, somehow we open to it. And it's not so much about projecting feelings into a cup, but opening to how precious and fragile it is, just like me. That's why I tell you I'm fragile, so you realize how precious I am. And if you realize how precious I am, you'll be tender with me. And if you're tender with me, you'll become Buddha. So I'm just trying to help you be Buddha.

[65:08]

One of our students at Zen Center, she started off by studying zoology. And she was in a zoology class. And her zoology teacher gave the students an egg. And he opened the egg so the students could see into the egg at the chick and see what a chicken egg is like. And then when they're done, she wanted to, she said, well, you know, now we're going to cover up the egg again, put the shell back. And the teacher said, no. And he said, I'll take care of the eggs. You don't have to take care of them. But the chicks are not going to survive. And she had this vision of the fragility of these chicks. It was very painful for her.

[66:10]

And that's why the teacher took care of them. And the teacher says, I did this so you would see, so that all of you students would see how fragile life is and how precious it is. And from that time on, she has been a vegan ever since. because she realized how precious chicks are, and of course other little animals, because they're precious because they're fragile. And we are too. And stillness and solitude helps us wake up to how precious everything is. And part of the reason everything's so fragile is because everything's in conversation. We can't You know, we want to protect our friends from harm, but we're going to break. Yes?

[67:13]

Well, I could say more, but it's more, it's kind of like, it's kind of like, just try it and you'll see. You know, almost everybody who sits still, you know, and gets... When the yoga room used to be in a different place, I was in a yoga class, and the yoga teacher said... Actually, we were lying in Shavasana. in the corpse pose, and the yoga teacher said, if you stay in any position long enough, I thought she was gonna say, you will experience great bliss. But she didn't, she said, if you stay in any position long enough, you will feel uncomfortable. And I said, that's better in a way than, not that uncomfortable is better than bliss, but rather that teaching is better than you'll have bliss.

[68:21]

First of all, before you have the bliss, you're gonna have some difficulty. And so when we sit in zen, as many of you know, if we sit still a long time, we feel uncomfortable eventually. And working with that discomfort, you know, not pushing ourself too hard or moving before, it really is necessary, but just carefully, respectfully working with the discomfort in our body, we become very tender towards this fragile, sensitive being. And not just towards this one, but towards the other ones too. So we tend to become more tender towards other people, towards the floor, towards our bowls.

[69:24]

And in that tenderness is where enlightenment's living. And that tenderness is similar to listening to the cries. all these fragile, precious beings are calling to us. And sitting still seems to open us to that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Dependent co-arising is a conversation. Everything that exists is a dependent co-arising. Everything that exists has dependently co-arisen. Yes. And I'm... I'm using the word conversation rather than... Let's have a dependent co-arising.

[70:29]

But in technical Buddhist terms, you are dependable arising. In other words, you arise codependently with unlimited conditions. And also everything else is arising dependently upon you. Well, thank you so much for another conversation.

[71:04]

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