Compared to that, you know, Buddhist practice seems sort of, I don't know, it doesn't happen. There's a tremendous amount of, you know, suffering in the world, and personal, you know, aside from our personal lives, which may or may not be working so well, and we may or may not have a job, or, you know, do what we want to be doing, or live where we want to be living, and so on. There's a lot of pain in the world, and people who are starving, and many kinds of social problems and ills, as you know.

[01:02]

When I started practicing, I started when I was about 20. While I was growing up, I guess, I don't know why, but, you know, in high school, I used to go to, this was in the 60s, you know, I went to high school in the early 60s, and there was a whole kind of, actually rather explicit kind of social directives. You need to pay attention in school, so you can get good grades, so you can go to the college, a good college, so you can get a good job, so you can buy a good house, so you can have a nice family, and grow old. I don't know, they didn't say that, but you needed to do well so that you could have this

[02:18]

future life that was the life that supposedly you wanted, except that I never understood what was so great about that life, you know, that was supposed to be out there in the future. It didn't interest me very much. Of course, I was also, in school, rather, you know, comparatively smart. You don't have to be very smart to do well in school, because, you know, it doesn't have to do with thinking, it's just, can you swallow the information and regurgitate it on the tests? That's, you know, education. Which I found sort of, you know, that to me, in and of itself, was sort of stupid, because it didn't seem to be the kind of knowledge that I wanted. And things got worse when I went to college, and somewhere in all that time, I got interested

[03:42]

in, or more interested in religion, so to speak, and studied world's religions, Hinduism and Buddhism and Christianity and Judaism and Islam and so on. And, basically, I mean, I did this because, you know, something in my life was, you know, wanted it, was seeking something, some kind of, something of meaning, something of value, which didn't seem to me to be in the, necessarily, or so obviously, in the life that society was projecting to be the kind of life that you should want, one should want. So, I never, in that sense, I feel like, in some way, I didn't fit in, you know, I didn't,

[04:59]

the whole kind of program and sort of thing that was, I didn't fit into the sort of life that was, one lived. So, when I was in high school, I decided not to apply to college. I thought, well, if college is anything like high school, it'll be pretty stupid. And, pretty useless. And my high school counselor called me in and said, aren't you going to apply to college? I noticed you haven't applied to college, and so I thought, I said, no, I wasn't planning to apply to college, it seems kind of stupid to me. I think I'll move to West Marin. Get a job. And he said, you know, college isn't the same as high school. If you don't want to go to class, you don't have to. There's lots of interesting things going on on campus.

[05:59]

You know, it's a great time for learning and growth and so on. So he talked me into it. I gave it a try. And then, a year later, I dropped out. During that year, I'd been going to school, and I took like social psychology, and I did a paper about alienation and anxiety. I got an A on the paper, and I was alienated and anxious as ever. Do you understand? What did it have to do with? As far as something real, my life, it seemed also kind of abstract. And in the meantime, my brother was sending me letters, and he had been going to Zen Center in San Francisco, so he would send me little Zen stories in the mail. My brother has since became an Episcopal priest, and then got saved, and he's now a Catholic.

[07:05]

But anyway, at this time, in his wayward youth, he was a Zen student, and he would send me Zen stories. And the one I remember, there's two that I remember. One of them is a story about Baso saying, mind itself is Buddha. And there's a little commentary there, and it says, whoever understands this story must be eating Buddha's food, wearing Buddha's clothes, living in Buddha's house. He must be Buddha. And there was this other story about a young man who wrote home to his mom saying he was doing very well in school, and getting good grades, and helping the other students on their papers, and studying for tests, and everything was going very well. And his mom wrote back and said, son, I didn't raise you to be a walking dictionary.

[08:13]

Why don't you go to the mountains and attain true realization? Unusual kind of mom, right? Most moms say, can't you go to school? You know what? Get a job. Anyway, I read that story and thought, that's for me. Especially when writing these papers didn't seem to do anything, one way or another. So when I dropped out of college after a year, it said, Reasons for Leaving, and I put, to go to the mountains and attain true realization. Got it straight out of the story, you know? I thought, that's for me. So not so long after that, I got to Zen Center, and Zen Center didn't have Tassajara yet, but a couple years later it did. And sure enough, there I was in the mountains. And I thought, well, I'll practice Zen for a year or two and get enlightened, and then I can do what I want. And this is really what I wanted to talk to you about today.

[09:20]

That was a lengthy introduction. But I thought that I could get enlightened. I had this idea, you know, I had various ideas about what enlightenment was about. I thought, you know, it would be a little bit like that, never having to say you're sorry. And like, you know, if somebody criticized me, then it would be, it wouldn't matter, because, well, I'm enlightened, so, you know, so it must be okay what I do. And so you don't have any really reason to criticize me because I'm enlightened. And so it would kind of eliminate a lot of conflict there. And I could feel good about myself also if I was enlightened. I could be well proud of myself or happy or whatever. Anyway, whatever else happens, anyway, I'm enlightened, so it's okay. And as you can see, you know, if you look at the history of Buddhism in America,

[10:29]

and not just Buddhism, but other teachings, every so often you actually run across teachers, and it's like this, actually, you know. They get to tell you where it's at, but you can't tell them where it's at, because they're the ones that are enlightened, and you're not, right, by definition. So whatever they do is just a teaching for you, right. If they have, you know, many love affairs, then it's not because they have any interest in sexuality. It's simply as a teaching for you. You know, so that it can bring up your impatience or your anger, your rigidity. You're going to have to look at that. Do you have some problem? You know, maybe you better study yourself a little bit more. You should let go of that kind of clinging to those kind of fixed ideas. And then what do you say? Yeah, I know, my ideas are fixed ideas, and your ideas, no, I know, they're sort of beyond that.

[11:38]

So somehow, you see, this is a nice explanation. So as a friend of mine said, well, it's good work if you can get it. And some people have the chutzpah to, you know, take up that kind of work and actually be successful at it, at least for some, you know, a period of some time. But actually, you know, so it's not so different than the idea that I started out with. I thought if I got enlightened, it would be good for something. Do you understand? You know, sometimes I think about it as a kind of immunity. You know, it's a kind of like inoculation or like a spiritual insurance policy. Only a real insurance policy, you know, that would prevent disasters. You get enlightened, and then you don't have to worry about these bad stuff happening to you anymore because bad stuff doesn't happen to people who are enlightened. It happens to those unenlightened people who don't know any better, etc.

[12:45]

So anyway, that's the kind of idea I had, and I thought, well, it'd be pretty simple because I can practice very sincerely and with great dedication, and it won't take me long. I know it's taken these other people. Some of these people, they were practicing for 20 or 30 years, and they didn't get it. Well, you know, that's probably because they weren't as sincere as I'm going to be, you know, in my practice. Well, it kept getting put off somehow. You know, a year goes by, two years, three years, nothing happens. Nothing ever happened. You know, there wasn't any great big moment. Nothing came along, you know, so this is pretty discouraging. Do you understand? Why am I doing this?

[13:54]

What's wrong with me? What's wrong with my practice? How come I haven't gotten it yet? And then there's a kind of rededication or else you quit, you know. I mean, you either have to keep going or you quit. But I was sort of stupid, you know, so I just kept going and thinking that, well, I'll get it sooner or later. And now, you know, it's been over 25 years, and still nothing ever happened. You know, I never got enlightened. And I never had any grand experience. No, nothing ever changed particularly. Do you understand? Nothing. And so for a long time, I felt really bad about this, right? Because if I didn't really get enlightened, right, how am I going to be able to lord it over people?

[14:59]

That's one side. Excuse me. But the other side is, if I've never really gotten enlightened, what am I ever going to have to say to people? Like, you know, I've gotten enlightened, and if you do this, this, and this, you can get enlightened too. Or don't worry because if you're not enlightened, because you will be eventually. It happens to the worst of us or the best of us or whatever, you know. So how can I sit up in front of people and give talks if I never got enlightened? Right? I mean, I thought for a long time if I give a talk, I should have something to give you that you don't have.

[16:05]

Right? That's why I'd be doing the talk. Because I have it and you don't, so now I'm going to give it to you. Right? Anyway, now that I think about it, that seems pretty silly. And it also seems not really to, in a very, I mean, in a very real way, it's not acknowledging your fundamental well-being. Or your fundamental, you know, Buddha nature. Your fundamental nature, your human nature. It's not acknowledging the fact that you already know. You have, you know, we're all, consciousness is intelligent. We all have intelligence. We all have in our heart compassion. We all have in our being some warmth and kindness and patience. And what would I actually give you?

[17:08]

You know, that you don't already have. That's pretty silly. And so I've decided some time ago that if I'm going to give talk, it's only to remind you in some way of what's already yours. And that, in fact, in that sense, that there's not some magical wand, magic wand you could get, like enlightenment, or some kind of special immunity that you would get after years of practice. Where you don't have to, where you can stop sort of paying attention to things. Or now you can, now you get to do whatever, just, you know, whatever you want. You don't have to worry about it because you're enlightened. Do you understand? Of course, in the meantime, I started, I mean, I've been, you know, I was studying.

[18:23]

I've studied Buddhism now and again. I mean, this is coming from somebody, you know, who didn't particularly like school, right? So, what's the point of study? It's the only thing you can do. It seems like it's so real to just sit down and sit still and follow your breath and see what happens. That seems very real way to settle yourself. You want to be settled? Then practice settling yourself. And, but in studying, I began to realize that actually there's, you know, in a way there's no such thing as enlightenment. So, I wanted to read you a passage about enlightenment and what it is or isn't. So, you can begin to get or continue to have some understanding about it.

[19:25]

Anyway, for me, one of the curious, the most curious points is how would you know it if you had it? How could you recognize a moment of enlightenment? What would be the, you know, distinguishing marks? In order to identify something, you know, it has to have some distinguishing marks. You know, what makes green green or blue blue? There's a distinguishing mark. For colors, of course, we have to have the other colors. Because if the whole world is green, nobody says green, right? So, you have to have purple and red and blue as well as green. And then you can say, no, that one's the one that's green and that's the one that's blue. And it's actually a whole area of things that are blue or green. And then there's a man and there's woman. And there's, so they have identifying marks. There's certain characteristics. And then you can point out.

[20:39]

Sometimes it gets a little confusing, right? So, how would you be able to recognize a moment of enlightenment? Say, aha, this must be a moment of enlightenment. And I, what I noticed, especially for many years, you know, when I was so intent on getting enlightened, I would look at each moment of my experience and say, now is this enlightenment? And then I'd say, no. Why? Would I keep saying no? Well, it wasn't somehow good enough. You know, like this moment of experience has a runny nose. That couldn't be enlightenment. This moment of experience, there's painful knees. Oh, that can't be enlightenment. This moment of experience, there's some annoyance.

[21:41]

Oh, that can't be enlightenment. This moment of experience, it's very calm. It's very peaceful. But there's still kind of little underlying uneasiness. Oh, that can't be enlightenment. So, basically, what I notice that sometimes is I'm going through each moment and I'm saying, is it enlightenment? And then I'm saying, no, it's not good enough. And every moment of experience, I'm finding something to criticize about it. Something to be, you know, that's not quite perfect about it. And somehow enlightenment was supposed to be this perfect moment that somehow transcended all other moments. You know, it was more than anything else, a whole different universe or something. Do you understand? You ever looked for something like that? You know, that can be really discouraging. And you feel really bad after a while.

[22:43]

Woe is me, you know, and all these moments that I have are imperfect. So I thought, well, how would, you know, so how do you recognize it? Buddhism teaches you already have enlightenment. So if you already have it, what could it be anyway? So how about looking at each moment of experience as though it is enlightenment. This moment of experience is enlightenment also, in spite of all these other problems that it has. Do you understand? Why not try that out? So I tried that out for a while. Oh, this is awful. Well, it must also be enlightenment. How can that be? And I kept doing that, you know, over some time. That was pretty interesting. And I also thought,

[23:46]

well, I came across that story where it refers to the koan about Bodhidharma and the emperor. When the emperor says to Bodhidharma, what is the highest truth? And Bodhidharma says emptiness, nothing holy. And in the commentary it says, well, setting aside what the meaning is, what would you do with it if you had it? The highest truth. This is like enlightenment. What would you do with it if you had it? Do you see? I mean, is it going to change your life if you have it or don't have it? What would you do if you had it? Why not just go ahead and do that anyway? As though you had it. Hmm. So I'm going to read you from the Vimalakirti Sutra. As you know, Vimalakirti is a layperson

[24:49]

who somehow seemed to be more brilliant than all the Buddha's disciples and all the Bodhisattvas. And this is a place where he's explaining to Maitreya, the future Buddha, what enlightenment is. Ahem. Therefore, Maitreya, do not fool and delude these deities. No one abides in or regresses from enlightenment. Maitreya, you should introduce these deities to the repudiation of all discriminative construction concerning enlightenment. What it is, what it isn't, right? How you'd recognize it, what it would be like. Enlightenment is perfectly realized neither by the body nor by the mind.

[25:51]

Enlightenment is the eradication of all marks. Enlightenment is free of presumptions concerning all objects. Enlightenment is free of the functioning of all intentional thoughts. Enlightenment is the annihilation of all convictions. Enlightenment is free from all discriminative constructions. Enlightenment is free from all vacillation, mentation, and agitation. Enlightenment is not involved in any commitments. Enlightenment is the arrival at detachment through freedom from all habitual attitudes. Enlightenment is the realization of reality. Enlightenment is without duality since therein are no minds and no things. Enlightenment is equality since it is equal to infinite space.

[26:54]

Enlightenment is unconstrained and unconstructed because it's neither born nor destroyed, neither abides nor undergoes any transformation. Enlightenment is the complete knowledge of the thoughts, deeds, and inclination of all living beings. Enlightenment is not a door for the sixth media of sense. Enlightenment is unadulterated since it is free from the passion of the instinctually driven succession of lives. Enlightenment is neither somewhere nor nowhere, abiding in no location or dimension. Enlightenment not being contained in anything does not stand in reality. Enlightenment is merely a name, and even that name is unmoving. Enlightenment, free of abstention and undertaking, is energyless.

[27:57]

There's no agitation in enlightenment. It's utterly pure by nature. Enlightenment is radiance, pure in essence. Enlightenment is without subjectivity and completely without object. Enlightenment, which penetrates the equality of all things, is undifferentiated. Enlightenment, which is not shown by any example, is incomparable. Enlightenment is subtle since it is extremely difficult to realize. Enlightenment is all-pervasive as it has the nature of infinite space. Enlightenment cannot be realized either physically or mentally. Why? The body is like grasses, trees, walks, paths and hallucinations, and the mind is immaterial, invisible, baseless, and unconscious. Hmm.

[29:02]

The one, you know, what interests me in particular is enlightenment is not about is constructionless, it's not a construction. You know, in other words, it means, of course, you can't put your finger on it and you couldn't identify it because it's not something that comes and goes. Do you understand? Things that come into existence and go out of existence, you can recognize, now they're here, now something's gone. Now you have it, now you don't. Okay? So enlightenment isn't in this category of things you have or don't have or things you get or lose. And this is really, actually, rather nice, isn't it? Isn't that refreshing? Not to have to worry about it at some point, right? Whether you have it or don't have it, whether you get it or lose it,

[30:24]

are you trying hard enough, not hard enough? And what would be the indication? Enlightenment has no marks. There's no way to identify it. In a certain sense, of course, enlightenment is another name for consciousness or awareness or fundamental being, our fundamental nature. As long as we're alive, there's pleasure and there's pain and there's suffering, there's old age, there's sickness, there's death, there's so many ills. And the mind and the body that we seem to have, each of us, has its own agenda, it seems.

[31:26]

Do you understand? I mean, there doesn't seem to be any way to control it, right? Our own mind and our own body, let alone the bodies and minds of others. And to make the mind or body behave according to the way I would like it to. And enlightenment certainly is not some better tool to do that. I thought that, in this sense, you know, I thought that practice would get easier. I thought that life would get easier. You know, if I practiced a spiritual practice, if I did meditation, you know, I will find some peace. I will have some release.

[32:27]

And in a certain sense, I suppose, you know, I could say that I, maybe I do, I don't know. It's really rather hard to determine. You know, that's all kind of a made-up fiction, isn't it? You have to, in order to determine that, you have to imagine or recreate what your life was like 20 years ago or something. And then compare that to what your life is like now and kind of make up these pictures. And then, you know, put them up side by side. What does it have to do with anything? Am I getting better? Am I getting worse? You know, is my life progressing? We're all in this sort of, you know, predicament called life. It's a mess. And it's, you know, it's unfathomable. It's beyond us.

[33:32]

And, you know, at some point, I mean, what can we do? What do we do? I came across this quote by Mother Teresa. She said, well, we can't do great acts. We can only do little acts with great love. How nice. Any one of us, you know, we're confronted with this overwhelming. To me, it's overwhelming. And I have to, in some small way, you know, make some small gesture. Do some kind of, make some effort and, you know, make some to express my warmth and my kindness and my, you know, to express my heart in the world. To me, I think this is, you know, probably more important, whether you have enlightenment or not.

[34:35]

You know, it doesn't matter much. You still have to live your life. And, you know, to say that we have enlightenment is just to say that, in some ways, it's to say you can trust your own being. You can trust your heart. You can trust your mind. You can trust your body. And usually, you know, we're, you know, we have to actually learn how to trust our own being. Do you understand? We have to learn how to trust that. Because it doesn't just happen. Most of the time, we know what we have, we have all these ideas about what a mind is supposed to be like and what a body is supposed to be like and what a life is supposed to be like. And so then we try to construct a life, to construct a mind, construct a body that's acceptable and passes the appropriate criteria. You know, that measures up, that's a life, a body, a mind that measures up.

[35:41]

That meets the standard that we've set. That has the appropriate behavior. So, you understand what that means? All the time, we have some voice or whatever, you know, agenda for our mind, agenda for our body. We say, now, don't do that, do this, don't do that, watch out. You stupid. You're all familiar with this, I'm sure. And this is, you know, tremendous, this is how, you know, there are many ways like this. In small ways and big ways, we don't actually trust our body, trust our mind, trust our own being. Thank you. And the more we have, you know,

[37:07]

some idea like what enlightenment is and what it would look like and we try to put that on our own body, put that on our mind, put that in our life and make our life look the way it's supposed to look, whether it's enlightenment or, you know, success or whatever it is, then the more we end up with this kind of problem and we'd actually end up not measuring up and actually feeling frustrated and upset because it doesn't look the way it should. My life, my mind, my body. So, you know, so practice, so to speak, practice is to receive a mind, receive a body and not so much tell it, your mind, your body, how it should be so that it will be acceptable. This is fundamental for Soto Zen

[38:09]

and you read it in Dogen and you know, so a student says what is the sudden enlightenment of the Mahayana school? And the Zen teacher Hyakujo said first stop all involvements and cease all affairs. Don't hold in mind or don't think of any Dharma, whether good or bad, mundane or transmundane. Cast aside body and mind and set them free. This is about

[39:12]

trusting your body and trusting your mind. Instead of trying to get a grip on the body, get a grip on the mind. Get it to perform properly the way it should. Get it to look like enlightenment. It's actually being, you know, a very good friend to yourself at last and allowing yourself to feel happy and sad and angry and peaceful and joyful and annoyed and all the things that we're capable of feeling. And it's also to recognize our, you know, fundamental basic good wish for our own happiness and the happiness of other beings. May I be happy and just as I wish to be happy, may all beings be happy. And we find some, you know, sometimes

[40:17]

when we're fortunate, we find some way to express this kind of wish that we have. Which is fundamental and basic to the nature of mind and body. This kind of wish for other beings, wish for happiness for ourself, wish to do something in the world to alleviate suffering and pain. And it comes out of our heart once we stop, you know, telling ourself how to behave. Do you know how it is when people tell you what to do? I don't know about you, but I get annoyed. I say, don't you have any confidence in me that I can figure out what to do? Don't you think that I have any sense of what to do and you have to keep telling me what to do?

[41:19]

This is, you know, so ceasing to stop involvements and cease affairs is to stop trying to regulate the mind and regulate the body. In this way, anyway, you know, we can rest at some point. We rest in whatever mind or body arises. We don't have to attack it. We don't have to do something about it. This is a, well, you're all familiar with that, you know, letting your sheep or cow have a large pasture. The Zen teacher,

[42:28]

Aikyu, studied for several years, six or seven or eight years he was practicing with his teacher. His teacher was very strict and wouldn't allow them to wear any extra clothes in the wintertime. They had to wear the same robes in the winter as in the summer. So no long sleeved undershirts, right? But Aikyu stayed with it. There were only a few disciples besides him. This is not a large monastery. There were six or seven of them. And one of the things he used to like to do sometimes was to sit on a boat in Lake Biwa and meditate in the boat and it would float around, drifting on the lake. And one day he heard a crow caw

[43:32]

and it was very, in some way, deeply affected him or moved him. Anyway, he was, they say, enlightened. He was enlightened. So he went to his teacher and he told his teacher about the experience and his teacher said, that's very good, Aikyu, but it's not the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors. And Aikyu said, I don't care, it's good enough for me. And then his teacher said, that's the enlightenment of the Buddhist ancestors. Anyway, you know, many of us have this kind of problem of, you know, things not being ever ...

[44:50]

If I took a long time to get here, I apologize. I don't know if you've been waiting a long time or not. I just started walking over here, you know, from over there and got here as soon as I could without being impolite. Most of the time when I walk down the street, you know, nobody says hello to me. And here, if I haven't given the lecture, nobody says hello to me. But if I've given the talk, suddenly lots of people say hello to me. It's very nice. I spent this last fall at Tassajara and it was one of the things I appreciated about Tassajara was that everybody there I know and they say hello to me and I say hello to them or we just bow. And then I come home here and then nobody says hello to me. I walk down the street and I'm completely anonymous.

[45:53]

Which I suppose, you know, at times it's kind of a relief, right? To just be anonymous, nobody knows you, you don't know them. But I find it kind of isolating. I start to feel, where am I after a while? Kind of lost. So it's been nice to come here today and then people say hello to me. It's also nice at Tassajara because you don't drive anywhere. Your life is in this one little place. It's very nice. I don't know, I like that. Some people I think like to go to the different places and it sort of helps their energy and whatever. I like just being in this place and then not having to go somewhere else and then somewhere else and then somewhere else and driving here and driving there and then being stuck in traffic and that whole thing. I think there's things like that, I think driving different places and so on, I think it affects us physiologically more than we know most of the time.

[46:58]

It actually takes a certain amount of time to accustom your body and being to where you are. And to actually be where you are. Settled. But anyway, what did you want to talk about today? Anything? Yes, Kathy? I really like what you said about there not being enlightenment because I told my practice teacher a couple of weeks ago that I'm just not getting it because it's just hard and I don't have any big experiences, I don't hear voices or see dragons and I'm really grateful that you made that comment that there isn't anything to wait for. What are all those other people talking about? I wondered the same thing myself.

[48:10]

You reminded me of a student, someone who used to be at Zen Center, David Schneider, he began studying Vajrayana Buddhism with Trungpa Rinpoche and so he was at a big event at the Masonic Auditorium that was put on by EST and they were going to have a big ceremony with His Holiness the Karmapa was doing the black hat ceremony or something, so the whole audience was people from EST and Trungpa Rinpoche was introduced and he came out and he sits down, he sort of hobbles out because he'd been in an automobile accident he never walked completely smoothly after that so he comes out and he sits down and he says you know in Buddhism we have a 2,500 year history and heritage and tradition and you people have been doing this for how long is it, five years?

[49:22]

And then he said we have a whole kind of science and practice of realizing enlightenment I think you call it IT. And then he said Werner here is a very good salesman Trungpa Rinpoche was a little exceedingly rude at times so to speak but he said don't lose your shirts And I think probably something like EST I think has probably helped a lot of people that way

[50:27]

I had a friend who went to EST and she had a wonderful time and she said that her person leading it was an Irishman who had regaled him at times and at some point he said it rather profanely but I will modify the profanity of this expression if you don't mind and finally he was sort of yelling at them at one point he said don't you get it you turkeys it's not supposed to work and that's a little bit like what I was saying today and she said after that she felt so elated that was a big relief to her because she had been trying to make it work for years you know her life and somehow when he said that with all of his whatever he sold her on it being a good salesman may not be so bad

[51:30]

but that is a kind of enlightenment it's not supposed to work so you don't have to punish yourself the damage I've done to myself fades away the daily sense of failure comes to an end because that is our life it doesn't work the way we'd like it to things don't go the way we want them to and so we can make a sincere and honest effort and offer our life and our work and our activity and that's pretty good and it's not as though there's something that could happen which would make everything work and in a way that is a realization that is an enlightenment an awakening that kind of fact yes

[52:36]

yes I think I've sort of gotten to that point where it seems like as you said there are always difficulties and in spite of all that it seems like it's important to really stay open to things and to stay optimistic and to look forward to the next experience and one thing I'm having difficulty with is knowing then when to step back from something and not engage in when to confront a problem and when to step back from it and say this is just not the time to bring it up one specific is that I had sent something to a person who never called me to thank me and then I called them two weeks later just to make sure they received it and the person said oh I'm on the other line

[53:40]

and then he said I tried to call you a couple of times but your phone number wasn't working or something like that and then he checked the phone number and said he had the wrong phone number and didn't call me right back and then he hasn't called so you know for me the question comes up given a sort of philosophical premise about how I want to live my life then confronting actual situations when you engage further and when you step back and say this just isn't working it's time to let it go and what kind of guidelines can you have for living in that context um well given my sort of basic premise we're working with today don't you get it it's not supposed to work

[54:41]

then it means that at some point then you follow your heart and if you don't know your heart then you try to find your heart and know your heart and so in that sense you you will have various impulses and you may want to write a nasty letter or you may feel spiteful or injured and being with that for a while you come up with what to do some of us act more impulsively some of us don't act fast enough so to speak or respond enough and so over time you get to know your nature whether you're the reactive kind or the kind who hesitates too long and that's from observing your behavior and what's happened to you over time and what you do over time

[55:46]

and noticing that and all of that is part of knowing your own heart and then at some point there's also the fact that because it's not supposed to work still there's such a thing as for lack of a better word theater and so in that sense you're you are free to improvise and you don't have to follow any particular script or try to create some script that you like but you make some expression and then see what happens and so to speak play with it and if you're not it helps then when you're not and even though certainly we'd like some result and some good result

[56:48]

when you're not attached to that you have more freedom because you don't worry about doing the right thing or saying the right thing or doing the thing you're supposed to say so the other person reacts the way you'd like them to and it just comes out of your being and so over time we're refining our being or trying to clarify our being so we know our heart well enough to be able to express it so that we can let somebody know we're perhaps offended or we feel some we would have wished for a response and at the same time it doesn't mean that we need to hurt the other person or something so I don't have any simple rule That sounds like you need to become like two people

[57:54]

Yeah? Can you say more? Well I have the same question The ordinary part of myself which usually is trying to behave properly and so on is usually at the front and I don't really understand the movement towards acting a role such as you're suggesting Oh as opposed to expressing what is using the manner of expression that you're accustomed to using

[58:58]

Do you mean? What I was trying to say by that in particular was just that sometimes we say things, we do things that are harmful or hurtful, we notice that and sometimes, for instance, I've noticed if I get angry, I'm trying to say something in particular about what I think or what I feel or what I want and all the other person seems to get is that I'm angry and they didn't get the message that I was actually trying to convey so then if I'm actually interested in conveying that message I have to think again about how to express it so they get the message that I want them to get rather than the fact that I'm angry and so then I may have to come up with some new way of expressing something so it's in some sense

[60:04]

sometimes we're a little slow to change our to come up with new repertoire in our life and we stick to our old ways of expressing and thinking and acting even when we notice how ineffective they are at actually doing what we want them to do so in a certain sense you could say yes, we're more than one person from a Buddhist point of view you could also in the Buddhist whatever you call it what's known as the Abhidharma which is kind of more for lack of a better word the more scientific anyway in that kind of understanding consciousness is a kind of collection of various elements so

[61:08]

if we have a desire for instance to say something in particular well there's also in our awareness or in consciousness is also wisdom and compassion and various factors which are all part of consciousness and so sometimes we have consciousness which so to speak is acting without the element of wisdom and sometimes there is more of the element of wisdom or sometimes there's more concentration sometimes there's less concentration so from that point of view there's I don't know how to say this but anyway it's possible then to actually cultivate or try to have a kind of consciousness which is including all the elements another way of looking at this is

[62:13]

well another way of looking at it is just that one aspect of our life is this that we're coming up with things to do which is a kind of expression and we also have something in our life which is a kind of restraint now sometimes there's a little disharmony there so some of us will tend to be expressing a lot and the element of restraint is not very well developed and for others of us the element of restraint is exceedingly developed and we need to have both and if you have one without the other some good balance or some harmonious relationship between spontaneity and restraint when it's out of balance we're expressing indiscriminately and actually not in a way that other people receive it the way we'd like them to and we actually cause injury and harm and then we say but I'm just expressing myself then people around us say yes but it hurts

[63:21]

and we say well tough luck you'll have to get used to it, it's the way I am and then other people we're going around and sort of restraining ourselves all the time and people are trying to say well I didn't know you felt like that you're not expressing yourself we need to work at times on having this harmonious relationship and understanding that whole dynamic and seeing the dynamic at work a friend of mine, another Buddhist priest here was at a theater workshop with Keith Johnstone and he picked up a mask and he was supposed to say something or do something and he did and Keith said what didn't you do? you stopped yourself didn't you? because he was about to do one thing and it was too wild even for theater and so he did something more restrained and Keith said well it's okay that you stopped yourself but you should notice that you stopped yourself

[64:23]

a lot of the time we don't notice that we're stopping ourselves and then we feel shut down or hurt or somehow trapped and then we say other people are doing that other people won't let me express myself you don't want to hear what I have to say only we're the ones who have already closed our expression off we decided that the other person didn't want to hear what we had to say so part of practice is not that if we were to identify at times we may identify me, I am the person who wants to express himself or herself and then other times we think I'm the person who needs to restrain myself but we're actually not either of those there's also somebody who's not either of those fundamentally we're not either of those elements of expression or restraint and in that sense that's the person who needs in some way to harmonize

[65:28]

the other two and see that they work things out and they're kind of with some harmony so to speak so if they're antagonistic with each other how come you're always restraining me well if I just let you do what you wanted look what happens and they get into this sort of thing back and forth and our tendency is to think one or the other of these is me and then we start taking sides and then pretty soon we switch to the other side and that kind of fight back and forth that's how we get stuck in thinking that one of those is more me than the other one and I have to get rid of that person who's trying to restrain me or I have to subdue that person who's always expressing himself too much so we're not any of those entities finally our basic nature is not to any of those we can identify with one of those or we can buy into one of them as being more real than the other one

[66:30]

but fundamentally neither of those are more me and I am not either of those I'm also somebody who doesn't have a story I'm somebody who's not an object somebody who's not an entity and I need to work out this dynamic so that it's a useful kind of dynamic I don't know if this helps how does that practice I see myself in that drama all the time and that's one of me that's one of the dramas to me the one you're speaking about that's behind you that you can kind of see that that's what I want but I don't understand how I can have that I'm too identified with this drama

[67:34]

because it's me it's who I've been living with for 48 years that in the terms we've been talking about today the one behind is not someone that you can actually have he just was saying I want to know better the one behind the drama who sees the drama going on who's not identified with the drama but as soon as you if you were to have that person so to speak or be that person then you've made it another object again so you can never succeed at actually sort of being that person and the other way of looking at it is that person

[68:34]

never exists apart from the upfront drama that you're talking about so in that sense it means that it's what we call we practice cultivating that aspect of mind which is mindfulness to cultivate the aspect of mind which is aware of various phenomena and various dramas and so on awareness is aware and you could say well then that's two people but this mindfulness is an awareness which is not interfering in the process and not taking sides in the process

[69:35]

and we're attempting to develop a kind of consciousness which is viewing each side with some kindness, some friendship, some generosity the person who's over restraining the person who's overly expressive and our awareness is engaging the awareness that's behind is engaging each of those and we're not quite so quick even though we'll notice that we are getting involved in this drama but we'll also be able to remind this is another aspect of mindfulness, we can remind each of the antagonists in this drama to be a little more kind or a little more, did you hear what she said? did you hear what he said? and we and so that over time in a certain sense that the nature

[70:36]

the basic nature of that kind of dialogue which is ongoing can change, basic nature becomes more you know each side in the drama is making more of an effort to understand the other side and actually hear the other side and help the other side express itself with some clarity as to what's going on and that's something that comes out of some basic mindfulness practice but it's not as though you eliminate the drama up front and just have the person behind that I don't think that happens yes, just a minute I deal with this all the time and when you were first explaining this I have this sensation that if I have a deeper connection, if I drop

[71:41]

the contact down into my being deeper then I can relax the whole interplay somewhat, and I can still but I have difficulty maintaining a really deep connection with myself but it happens spontaneously in a very simple way to be aware of your breath is some way to have a larger picture because your breath is something that comes and goes your breath is inhalation and exhalation when I am quite upset the thing that seems to help me the most is to go walking then you start to breathe, and you're aware of the sensations of walking so your awareness is not my awareness is not so then quickly and immediately

[72:41]

and irrevocably identified in this inner struggle and turmoil but there is some actual relief from that in the physical sensations, in the physical being which is somehow bigger than that sitting helps me like that too, but sometimes I would just as soon go for a walk I wanted to say the same thing most of us have that struggle because it's also internalized aspects, you know, like you're talking as your mother or as your father or as your employer and all these things are there and you have to deal with all these aspects, it's not just two, there are lots of them and I feel also the more you get detached from that, and I think sitting helps

[73:43]

a lot with that, the more you come to the real basis which I understand is this person that's behind there so the more you get rid of the self, the accumulated self the more you get in touch with where you can really act and where you really know how to do your... You know, to take something like that, how you really can act, how you really know I find, you see, I have to be careful with those kind of ideals, right? To me it seems much more like I may never really know I may never really understand, so what am I going to do? And how would I ever know whether I really knew?

[74:43]

So then I have to just sort of, as I was saying in my talk here, I have to trust somehow my heart, I have to trust and I have to be when I say something, I'm not trying to say like you know, at Zen Center for years we've had this kind of problem because we sort of get involved in this kind of religious stuff and being who we are and being somewhat idealistic, right? You go to a meeting and then at this meeting people are trying to make a decision that is the perfect decision that can never be criticized by anyone now or in time in the future. Do you understand how hard it is then to make a decision? So we'd go hours, you know, talking about, well, but you know, then from this other point of view, but you know, somebody could think this, you know, so it would just be interminable meetings. ... And at some point, you know, I would get very frustrated

[75:50]

you know, very kind of frustrated and annoyed and angry and can we just like, can we just decide something, can we do something that is, you know, and if there's a lot of criticism then let's be willing to look at it again. You know, let's not try to do the thing that's you know, the perfect thing where there's not going to be any criticism, let's do something and decide something and then see where we go from there. You know, let's, and to me that's a bigger place, you know, that's that's a bigger place rather than thinking that I could know and then I can do or I can say and you know, it can't be challenged. So we, and that's, in that sense, I think about it as you know, an offering. ... I was, you know, for years I've been around Zen Center and we do this, you know, meal offering, you know, this red tray and we put these little dishes of food on there and we go and offer it up on the altar before the formal meal

[76:54]

is in the Zen door, right? And I wonder like, what is that about? And that guy never eats the stuff. You put the food up there and the Buddha never even says a damn thing about it, never says, oh that looks good. Excuse me, I'm not hungry today or I'm fasting, but you know, it does look good, thank you very much. Doesn't say thank you and doesn't say, oh get it out of my face, I can't stand the, you know, the smell of it. The Buddha doesn't say anything. This is very interesting, you see. But this is what we've been talking about today. This is a, that's a metaphor you know, for what we were talking about today. You make the offering and the Buddha doesn't say anything. The Buddha is perfectly aware of the offering for all we know. But the Buddha's not saying anything. He's not saying

[77:57]

good, bad, like it, don't like it, oh boy, you know, take it away. Thank you very much, no thank you. You did good, you did bad. I appreciate, you know, there's nothing there, nothing is coming back. And this is a kind of, you know, this is a kind of freedom or this is our effort then is to make this offering in our life. We make this offering and it's not because we have the perfect offering to make. It's not because we have the offering that is the most insightful or the deepest or the purest. It's because that's our offering, you know, and so we offer it, we make this offering. That's, and then you have, then you bow and then you walk away. I don't know what happens, you know, I come here and I talk and I don't know what happens, you know, you all are here and I don't know if it's especially good or bad or, I mean, people seem to let me come back.

[79:00]

So, but if I think about it, I mean, the other night I gave a talk somewhere and I felt really terrible afterwards and I thought, God, what an awful talk. But who knows, you know, I'm going on and on about how awful it is and, you know, but I'm not, you know, that's from my point of view. I don't know, you know, whether it has any good effect or bad effect, but, you know, so from that point of view, but I know it's sincere. I know it was, you know, and I know it came from, you know, out of my wish to in some way offer something to people that, you know, might be useful for them and might, you know, kind of be something else that they could, you know, that goes into, goes in there with everything else and everything's moving around, who knows. You know, maybe it pops up later, maybe it doesn't.

[80:04]

We don't know, what do we know? So anyway, I see it more like that, you know, some point, you know, in our life we just offer, we keep offering things. This is our generosity. Whether what we have to offer from some other point of view is, you know, the greatest thing or the really knowing thing or the thing that can't be criticized or not, we have to anyway offer it. Otherwise, we keep waiting until, you know, what we have to offer is good enough. And mostly we wait too long then. You know? We'll just wait and wait and wait. And I tell the same thing about, you know, cooking. Some friends of mine decided, we decided, well, let's make some cooking videos. We haven't gotten started on this yet. But, you know, we'll do like maybe a 13-week series for PBS, right? So we're going to do cooking classes and there'll be some little zen things in there and then there'll be some little cooking instructions and then there'll be some, you know.

[81:06]

And I want to do a cooking show, you know, that's different from other cooking shows, right? Because I don't care so much about three tablespoons of this and two of this and, you know, blah, blah, blah. I mean, it's sort of like, I mean, is that what cooking's about? Give me a break, right? And so in this little blurb they wrote up about these cooking things, they say, and Ed will teach even inveterate meat eaters how to produce vegetarian masterpieces. I said, excuse me, but what is this preoccupation with masterpieces? Like, you're not supposed to cook unless you can make a masterpiece? Well, you know, no wonder so few of us are in the kitchen. You know, no wonder, you know, like we're going to go out to eat or we're going to, you know, we can't cook because we say, well, but I can't make a masterpiece. And I just want to, I'd sort of like to just, my show, I want to encourage people

[82:11]

just to, would you just please cook something, you know, moderately good and have a good time and enjoy eating it and, you know, have some friends over? I mean, let's be real, right? So, as much as anything, I don't, you know, I want to encourage, you know, this kind of offering. This is a generosity of spirit just to, you know, you cook something, you offer it. Except that when you cook, it turns into a masterpiece when you let her have it. All right. I'll tell you one more story about cooking like this. I went to a friend's house for dinner one night. This is somebody I hadn't met. He's now a friend. But some friends of mine knew him. He's another chef. He has a restaurant in San Francisco called Le Tru. Fairly small, expensive French restaurant. So the restaurant was closed the night we wanted to go and eat.

[83:13]

So he said, well, come over to my house for dinner. This is a real, you know, chef, right? Unlike some of us. So we went over to his house for dinner and I took a couple of 10-year-old California wines and he had two 20-year-old Bordeaux's out for us to drink. Anyway, this is not the point of the story. But the first course, the first course of this dinner was when we came in and we sat down and so while we were visiting before dinner, the hors d'oeuvres, radishes. They were washed. And they were on a platter. And they still had their little rootlets and they still had their green stems. And then out on the table there with this platter of radishes was little dishes of sweet butter and little dishes of salt.

[84:15]

So you could have plain radishes, radishes with butter, radishes with salt, or radishes with salt and butter. So you had actually four dishes in one there. Now I thought anybody who could, you know, appreciate radishes that much. Now there, you see now, is that a masterpiece? You see, that's a masterpiece. But when people say masterpieces, they don't think about serving a platter of radishes. But so a lot of this idea we have is not, you know, it's funny. We sort of think something to be a masterpiece has to be this, you know, inventive, creative, brilliant thing. And here it's just radishes. And, but it means that somebody actually can appreciate a radish. You know, somebody can taste a radish and know a radish and, you know, and that radishes have value. Radishes have this inherent

[85:17]

value. And so to present a radish like that and in the right context, you know, where it can actually be valued. And then we had some French apple cider with it. It's slightly alcoholic. I don't know if you've had that French apple cider. It's like 3% or something. It's like weak beer. But in that context you see, then we all sit down and we go sort of like, oh, this is really nice, radishes. And then you taste it and you have some with a little butter and it was so good. And it doesn't, so as much as anything, it's not, it doesn't have to do with you know, like you make it into something for it to be something. It already is a value. It already is something. So you have, so our effort is to actually honor what it already is and offer what it already is.

[86:22]

Some people don't like radishes, some people do, you know. But still, we've found something and we present it. And that's what we do in our life. And we need to do it more. You know, we need to make, you know, give ourselves an offer more. You know, on the whole. And not worry as much as we do about whether it's good enough or enough of a masterpiece or whatever. I think most of us are in that kind of situation. Yeah? You said something earlier about not having stories. Can you talk a little more about not being a person with stories or something? I'm not sure I remember exactly. Well, we were sort of talking about this before, but we're also somebody with stories

[87:24]

and we're also somebody without stories. And the aspect is without stories we sometimes call it enlightenment. Enlightenment. You know, enlightenment doesn't have stories. Enlightenment doesn't have names. Enlightenment is a name. Enlightenment is only a name. But anyway, we're somebody who has stories and we're somebody we can say this and this and this about. We're also somebody who is beyond, who is without description. In some fundamental way, you know, that's not all we are. The story I like about that in a way is a story I read in a book called How Can I Help? And I think I've told you before, but in that book How Can I Help? There's this doctor who tells about when he was at this particular hospital, there was a patient who had serious, you know, many, many complications, and they had heart problems and lung problems and kidney problems, and somehow he was still alive. And so all these doctors

[88:24]

would come to see him, because he was sort of this medical marvel. So there'd be all these people coming and going, and he'd always... And when they'd go to see him, they would always be surprised to see him. Like he was still alive. And yet this other person, he was always surprised to see them. How you doing? Oh, what you doing here? And this doctor said he enjoyed going to see this patient a lot, because it was always kind of this... It made him feel good to visit with this person. He's an old black man. And one day they got to talking about their kids and this and that, and out of the blue this patient says to him, who are you? So now do you tell the story or what? So he thinks, well, I'm Dr. So-and-so. Well, I'm married. Well, I'm X years old.

[89:27]

And while he was sort of going through these things, he realized that none of those things actually described him. Who are you? Well, I'm 36. Well, so what? Lots of people are 36. I mean, you know, and you're a husband. So he's going through this whole thing, and he realizes that none of these things that he can say actually describe him. And so then he says, I felt a tremendous sense of elation. See, to not be identified that I'm more than these things, that I actually am... With this person asking him, he actually had some sense of this kind of elation, and that he was also somebody who's not any of these names and descriptions. And just then the person said, pleased to meet you. Laughter He said his timing was, you know, uncanny.

[90:29]

I love that story. But anyway, that's the people we are. Sometimes we get involved in making the story. We want the story to be really good. And we want the description of who we are to be a masterpiece. And we forget that we're also somebody, and that our real freedom or our elation and our joy in some way is the fact that we're not finally... We can't finally be captured by any of those descriptions. And that we don't have to worry about those descriptions. You know, even though they're there, and we can use them. They're necessary at times. But it's not a final... It's not a final thing that we're caught by or trapped in. That we're also somebody without any story. Who's beyond stories. And that's a relief.

[91:34]

It's a relief. Thank goodness. Otherwise we have endlessly trying to live up to something or other. Yes?

[91:49]

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