I'm going to start with some announcements because often if I don't start with the announcements I just forget about them later. First of all I want to wish you a happy Thanksgiving because I probably won't see you before Thanksgiving. I'm going to go to Florida and visit some friends. My friend and student who lives in Cocoa Beach. It's kind of fun for me to be away from home so I'm looking forward to it. I've dealt with, fortunately it seems like the plumbing problems are coming up while I'm home. One of the toilets just got stopped up and I got the plumber and the snake down the line 100 feet. Earlier this summer I was home when the water line broke between the street and the house

[01:02]

and it was gushing out of the ground. That was fun. I'm hoping these things don't happen while I'm away but usually they don't somehow so that's good. I probably won't see you any more Sunday nights here the rest of the year. I don't know when I'll be back. We haven't scheduled anything for next year but Phillip and I are planning to teach together at Spirit Rock on December 4th which is a Sunday. I can't remember what the theme is. We probably created a theme which we may or may not follow but we're going to check and see what it was. I think that's it.

[02:06]

I think that's what I wanted to remind you about. As I mentioned earlier and I was encouraging you to, if you chose to do so, the possibility of enjoying your breath. In Vipassana we like to give people choice. In Zen we just tell people what to do. Don't move. Just die. There are no more moments. This is your last moment. Nothing will help you now. So stop looking for help. In Vipassana we say if you chose to do so you might undertake the bow of sitting still. It would be more polite and not just tell you.

[03:12]

Tonight I was suggesting enjoying your breath. I'm thinking about this for various reasons but as I mentioned during the Qigong, I have found out that I am officially a Type A person. Type A means that given your resources which vary with different people. We have various levels of resources but given your level of capacity, when you undertake to do twice what you're capable of, that's considered wholesome and about right because then you're extending, you're growing, you're challenging yourself, you're having to study, you're working on things. But when you get above doing twice what your capacity is, and I'm only 3.5 actually as a Type A person, I'm a slacker. But 3.5 is getting up towards doing twice what is actually useful and possible to do.

[04:21]

You can't do it even for a day. So then you, as those who know me well can attest, you can have a lot of anxiety about all the things that you're not getting to, that you were thinking about doing. And then you can have a lot of stress, anger, resentment, frustration that people aren't helping you enough, they're in your way, things are going wrong, they're not working out. And then you can be sad and depressed and despondent. I can't do it. I'm a failure again. I'm so incompetent. What's wrong with me? I can't even... And then pretty soon you're so stressed and anxious about all the things there are to do that you can't even focus on doing one thing. All you can do is... So people who are really, you know, top of the line Class A, you know, like 16 to 1, not just 2 to 1 or 3.5 to 1, but 16 to 1. Now there's a top of the line, you know, Type A, and it's 16 to 1.

[05:27]

You know, then when they find out they're Type A they say, But doctor, I can't get it. You've got to be kidding. I can't do anything. So that's because you're trying so hard to do so much, you can't even focus. You can't set aside all the things you have to do and just do one thing. So this is kind of news to me on the one hand, but it's really useful for me to find this out. I'm going to get to the part about joy. It's coming. It's coming. But this has been really useful for me to find out how Type A, you know, that I'm actually Type A. And, you know, years of Buddhist practice haven't helped. There's a certain irony to this. I hope you're realizing. You know, I saw a flyer up there that says, you know, come to meditation and develop inner peace. I mean, friends have told me if you hadn't done it already, we'd suggest you go to a Zen monastery or a Vipassana retreat.

[06:40]

Because you are really stressed. You know, you're stressing unnecessarily here. And, but now that I reflect on it, you know, what happens is that, you know, if a Type A person, if you hear that meditation is good, and it's a nice change of pace and, you know, you could develop inner peace, well, let's become world class at it. So let's get really devoted here and really serious about it. And let's turn it into another Type A activity. Rather than have it be meditation, you know, let's make it another Type A activity. So one of the dangers when you're Type A is that you turn all the possible relief from the stress and doing too much into another Type A behavior. So meditation, so what did I do? You know, I went to a Zen monastery for, not monastery, but, you know, Zen student residence at the Zen Center for 20 years.

[07:48]

You know, and then I did week-long retreats and, you know, sitting from 3 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night in 40 minute periods. And, you know, 10 minutes of walking and 40 sitting and sitting for the meals, you know, 50 or 60 minutes. And then, you know, it's a lot of cross-legged sitting. And I was very serious about this because if you're going to do something, you should really do it. And then I went to a three-month Vipassana retreat, you know, and I actually followed the schedule. I don't know if you've been to three-month retreats, but, you know, the one I was at anyway, there were, you know, 8 or 10 of us out of 60 or 70 who were following the schedule. I mean, the hall would empty out, except for when they were giving instruction or a talk. Then the place would fill up, but otherwise, like, there's 6 or 8 people sitting. And, you know, because they tell you, some of you may find it hard to sit here.

[08:51]

You know, well, sit in a chair. If it's too hard, sit in a chair. And if you don't like these chairs here, we have some really cushy, easy chairs. This was IMS over in the library next door. You know, they're upholstered, and, you know, they have big arms, and people sit there. But, you know, I was a Type A meditator, so we don't go for those cushy chair-type things, you know. Like, you've got to muscle through, you know, get it done, you know, accomplish it, make it happen. And so, you know, you probably don't have this kind of problem, but some of you might. And I thought it might be useful if I tell you a little bit about Type A tonight. Because, you know, some of you, not, you know, only a few of you probably are Type A, you know. And as I tell you, I'm just a slacker as a Type A, and some of you might be even better at being Type A than me. But also, it's interesting, I think, to know about, because you may know some Type A people in your life.

[09:56]

So I'm going to tell you a little bit about how to work with being Type A, okay. So this is, one of the things is, you take something that could be a relief or a pleasure or a joy, and you just turn it into another thing to accomplish and get done and become good at. So maybe you start going for walks, and then you turn the walks into jogging, and then you become, like, you know, in the senior citizen, you know, top jogging team in the country, you know. And you time yourself, and you know, you're going to get better at it, and you're going to be good at it. And if you start doing yoga, you could do, you know, you can get better and better at the yoga. And if you, you know, meditate, you could do more meditation. And so I've been doing this for a long time. It did occur to me for a while that, you know, it might be useful to develop a little bit of a sense of humor. So I kind of worked on that, you know, developing a sense of humor.

[11:08]

But here's the thing now about, we're getting to joy now, okay? Here's the thing about joy. It turns out that one of the things that's, there's three things that are useful for Type A people. Type A people, you can't just tell them, don't do so much. Type A people can do that for one or two days, two days at most. Third day, you know, you're just back at trying to do too much again. So it doesn't work to do it just head on. Well, don't take on so much. You know, that doesn't work. I mean, there's the kids. There's the work. There's the shopping. There's the dinner. There's the house. There's, you know, there's the plumbers to call. You know, there's all this stuff going on in our lives. And I'm sort of starting to think that, you know, I started seeing Type A behavior everywhere now, you know? But anyway, the suggestion for Type A people you see is that you, instead of just working all the time,

[12:12]

you actually stop sometimes and do something for the fun of it. And you actually start having some joy. And I've been trying this and it's really challenging. I don't know if any of you tried enjoying your breath. But it can be very challenging, like, because you're not getting anything done. You're just having a good time. And would that be all right to just have a good time and enjoy yourself? Shouldn't you be getting somewhere, accomplishing something, you know, getting better at your meditation, having a calm mind? You know, shouldn't you be working at it? You know, so joy is a little counter to this whole Type A mentality, you know, of getting somewhere. And, you know, so I started thinking, like, well, how much chocolate can I eat? You know, like, I enjoy chocolate and I enjoy having a cup of tea.

[13:17]

But how much tea or coffee or chocolate can you eat or drink during the day, you know, for your joy? And so I'm starting to look around for, you know, how to have joy or pleasure. And it's been really challenging. I'm not very good at it. And I've actually been having the last week, you know, a fair amount of grief. That, oh my goodness, you know, I've spent, I'm now 60, you know, I've spent 60 years of my life, you know, trying to get someplace rather than actually. And I don't have time to enjoy being with friends. How can you enjoy being with friends when you've got work to do? So I kind of, like, talk to somebody and then I better get back to work. Do you understand? So I haven't had time for friends. And even though, you know, and then, and I haven't had, you know, and then my, of course, I turned my daughter into a type A person.

[14:27]

Because growing up, when she was growing up, I never had time for her. Do you understand? Because if you're busy being a type A person, and the way that you become a type A person, you get, this is not innate. This is strictly by, you know, what happens. It's a learned, it's a learned response. Okay? The classic study that they did was with pigeons. And they had two groups of pigeons. And one pigeon, there's a pecking apparatus. And one group, the pigeon pecks and they get a reward. They get a, you know, a grain, a piece of grain to eat. Peck, eat, peck, eat. When you've had enough to eat, you're not pecking anymore. The other group of pigeons, one peck, nothing happens, another peck. And then occasionally, a big, there's a reward. It's an infrequent, unpredictable reward.

[15:35]

So you learn to just keep pecking. And hope that there's, that it's going to pay off eventually. And you find, you know, there's once in a while, there's a little, there's a payoff. There's enough reward to keep you hooked into working so hard. But I've done all these things in my life, but there's no, there's no sense of accomplishment or pleasure or satisfaction or joy because, no, you just, you just, because you've got to keep working. So how do you enjoy anything? And it turns out, you see, then they discovered, I mean, oh, and by the way, you know, with these pigeons, at one point, as somebody said, how can scientists be so, you know, cruel? But at one point, they stopped feeding the pigeons. Well, the type B pigeons, you know, they're pecking, and there's no food comes out.

[16:41]

They peck, no food, and they're pretty quick to like, well, screw that. I don't need this. So then they stop pecking. The type A pigeons keep pecking until they die. And with their last breath, they're thinking, damn, if I could have just done one more peck, I would have gotten the biggest payoff ever. So this is, so how this happens, you know, for people, and, you know, it's, I'm convinced now that I started thinking about it, it's happening more and more because of the kinds of childhoods we have. Because what they found in the correlation with people is the reward for people is, number one, reward is attention. Number two, approval.

[17:43]

Number three, affection. Material stuff is way down the list. Attention, approval, affection. And if you got that regularly when you were a child, then you don't get into type A behavior. When you didn't have that regularly and consistently and predictably, then you learn to keep, you know, to work, you know, to try to get that. You work very hard, and whether it's there or not, or occasionally, you know, somebody says, oh, thank you, once in a while, or I appreciate this. But, you know, most of the time, you're working away, and you're not, as some other of my theater improv friends used to say, how many of you, how many of you in the audience here are getting all the love you deserve? What's the problem? You're, aren't you working hard enough? Aren't you, you know, fulfilling your obligations, your responsibilities, your commitments,

[18:46]

getting the kids to soccer practice, to the dentist, you know, school, you know, work, you know, family, you know, the house. You're taking care of things, aren't you? Aren't you working hard? What, it's not paying off? So, most of us, or many of us, you know, are seriously, you know, we don't have time. We don't have time for enjoyment or time to, another, you know, aspect here of this would just be to receive the love you've always wanted. How do you do that? Because it's also, it was supposed to pay off. All of the effort we were making was supposed to have this payoff. Attention, approval, affection, all the love you ever wanted. And when's it going to happen? First noble truth. Oh, damn. Again.

[19:48]

So, and nowadays, you know, fewer and fewer babies, children are getting attention from parents. You know, and Joseph Chilton Pierce and other people who, you know, have studied in detail child rearing. He wrote that book, The Magical Child. And then there was another one on the transcendent mind or something. Crack in the Cosmic Egg. He did Crack in the Cosmic Egg, but there was a newer one too about the transcendent mind or something. Or transcendent biology. But, you know, much of our development is in the connection with mom. And face-to-face, body-to-body contact. And, you know, well, I mean, I clearly missed out on all of that. You know, because I was born premature and in the hospital for three weeks. I didn't have contact. Or, you know, a little. But not like you really, like it's really, like you can count on it. It's unpredictable, it's infrequent.

[21:03]

And it was just like that, you know, it's been like that continuously. And once you start doing spiritual practice, it's not like anybody's going to say. I thought I'd try to say tonight, you know, thank you for being here. Thank you for your sweet good-heartedness and your, you know, sitting quietly. But anyway, so just to say a little bit more about that. And then move on to talk a little bit more about joy. But right now for me, you know, this is part of the context of this. And working on this. But the suggestion is, you know, to shift out, to shift away from being Type A. That you start working in blocks of time. You only, you know, like you work for a certain length of time. And then you promise yourself you're going to stop at that time.

[22:05]

And you stop at that time. Whether you're finished or not. And then you do something, and then you have a reward. You know, you do something that's pleasurable. Type B people, they, you know, if they're studying, you know, in college. They may study for a while, and then they go out and play frisbee. And they have a good time, and then they can come back and study. I never understood this. No, you just study. And then if you get tired and you go out and play frisbee, you're still stressed about all the stuff you have to do. So you don't really enjoy playing frisbee. It's like, oh my goodness, I'm not studying. And then you're anxious about all of that. And so you can't even enjoy playing frisbee. You can't enjoy your time off. So this is about separating the time when you're working and the time when you're enjoying. And not turning meditation into another place to work. I did it.

[23:09]

Reminds me of a friend of mine. Well, some people I know do what they call Kundalini Yoga. Not Kundalini Yoga, but Shravan... Kashmir Shravism. And they do sitting, cross-legged sitting meditation where they have their palms up, fingers together. I think they do this probably at Sivananda. Not Sivananda, but, you know, the... Swami Muktananda. And they often would sit looking at, you know, the guru, the teacher or a statue or something. And I went to one of their retreats one time, a week-long retreat. We'd get up in the morning and do a little yoga and we'd have a period of meditation. And then we'd have breakfast and we'd clean up from breakfast. Then we'd have a little break and then there'd be a little class for an hour. And then we'd have another break for an hour, hour and a half. We'd have lunch and then, you know, the afternoon.

[24:12]

Well, you know, go and enjoy yourself. You know, get some exercise. Get some fresh air. You know, get out in the sunshine. It's summer on Martha's Vineyard, you know. Well, go for... play some tennis, go for a hike, you know. Take a little boating, you know. And then before dinner we'd have a period of meditation and then we'd have dinner. And then in the evening there might be another little class. That's their retreat. And somebody during this retreat said to the teacher at one point, you know, shouldn't we be doing more meditation? This is a retreat. Shouldn't we be meditating more? I mean, and he said, isn't this about right, don't you think? And they said, well, what about Ed? I mean, he just meditates all the time. He goes to these Zen retreats. He goes to three-month retreats. You know, that's got to be good to like do that much meditation. And then the Swami said, he meditates like that because he likes to.

[25:16]

Which I thought was a pretty good answer at the time. But now it's sort of like, no, he meditates like that because he's driven to. You know, because he's obsessed with becoming a world-class meditator and he's packing away without any reward. And he doesn't get it, how to have a good time and just enjoy his breath and enjoy the pleasure of people's company and enjoy, you know, friends and family and being with people. And he doesn't, he's, you know, retarded. He doesn't know how to do that. And I tried one time, I was the head resident teacher at Tassajara, you know, the Zen center at Tassajara. And we were having a three-month practice period. And our three-month practice period, we're doing a lot of meditation in the morning and then we, in the afternoon, we're working.

[26:20]

Everybody's working because we're doing all the work, you know, ourselves. We're, there's not a staff of people doing the work for the people, the yogis who are in meditation. No, we're the staff and the people meditating. We're everything, you know. So, so I suggested one point, you know, and we're having all silent meals, you know. I said, well, why don't we have a meal where, you know, like once every five days or every 10 days, like a meal, like where we sit and chat with each other and talk and visit and get to know one another. Oh no, we're here to meditate. The students refused. They said, we are here to meditate. We're not here to get to know anybody or enjoy anybody's company or anything like that. No, we're here to meditate. This is our chance to do that. So I gave up. So anyway, this has become my new project. But anyway, I thought I'd talk with you a little bit, you know,

[27:30]

about joy and a few other odds and ends of things. Since I'm kind of, you know, usually teachers are telling you stuff they need to hear. I don't know if you've noticed that. So I'm going to tell you some things that I need to hear now so that I can get a little teaching. So again, joy, of course, is one of the seven wings of enlightenment. And part of the wonderful quality about joy is that when joy is present, there is more likely, as I mentioned in meditation, it's more likely for consciousness to settle where there's joy

[28:30]

and become less distracted. Because when joy is present, there's not looking around for it. It's not here. It must be somewhere else. Where is it? So the more you can enjoy your breath or your sitting, the sensations, the sounds, the more you feel settled where you are. And joy in Buddhism, again, many of you, I'm sure, if not most of you, understand joy has something to do with being moved by or being moved with, resonating, awareness resonating, so-called resonating or vibrating with the object of awareness. So it's also like to say that to be touched,

[29:32]

to let something touch you. This is also at times challenging. And it's different than often the idea we have about meditation, which is I maintain a mind untouched by things, that I'm going to maintain a mind that doesn't get ruined by stuff, that doesn't get impinged upon, and that maintains its peace and quiet and sanctity by being separate from things. Do you understand? In Zen it's called, the suggestion is, don't set up a nest or a den. Because often what we're doing is setting up a kind of place, and it's often in our heads, where it's kind of quiet and we can hang out. And then we'd rather not relate to anything. Why would you want to relate to something?

[30:37]

As soon as you relate to something, then you'd have to do something about it. It would be more work for you. So it's better just to not be aware of much of anything, and be in your own world and in your own space, and taking care of the things that, you know, rather than letting something touch you, for goodness sakes. And as I've told you before, the epitome of this is you go to the grocery store, and why do you buy something? Buy me, buy me, I'm quick, I'm easy. You won't have to relate to me at all. Just put me in the microwave, and I'll be there for you. This is America. Have it your way. Watch what you want, when you want to watch it. You know, now you can have Comcast cable or something that, you know, you don't even have to watch the television program that's on. You can watch what you want, when you want to watch it. Because, you know...

[31:37]

And then if you fill the time up with television, then you don't have to relate to anything, really, and figure out what to do with it. But this is, I think, useful, you know, as far as having... It may be helpful for people like me, and get a little joy and ease, and, you know, I may need to do more of this. But joy, anyway, has the quality of being touched by something. So, enjoying your breath is... You could actually let your breath, instead of, you know... Let your breath really move you. And move your body. And allow your body to move with your breath, like we're... expand, you know, contract, flow in, flow out. There's the quality of movement. And oftentimes, when we're meditating, we're... At least in my experience, you know, I'm sitting still, I'm sitting too still,

[32:38]

and I'm working at it, rather than allowing myself to be moved and touched. A friend of mine went to... The evening with Mary Oliver, it was recently in San Francisco, and she said... Mary Oliver said, at one point, that her practice is to be still, and allow herself to be awed. Or, I think it was awed, and I think it was astonished. How do you sit still and be astonished? So, this is different than just the quality of, I'm going to work at staying with my breath, or I'm going to pay attention to the breath, or come back to the breath. But the more there's the quality that, if there's any way you can enjoy your breath, and it fills you, and it expands you,

[33:40]

and it opens your face as you're inhaling, and it touches your cheeks, and the breath is moving throughout your body. It's not just the lungs. The whole body is breathing. So, there's this possibility of, so to speak, I mentioned the Kabir poem, entering the breath, inside the breath. But there's a kind of a mind that's associated with the breath, the mind of breathing. And this is where you're allowing your awareness to be moved and touched by the breath, and go with the breath. Your body, both your body is inhaling, and your mind exhaling. And so, you're touched and moved by the breath,

[34:43]

rather than it being a kind of work or effort to be with the breath. And the more you're touched and moved, then you know how ease, what ease, what enjoy, and then ease and joy, and then you're able to be present, and notice, you know, aware, awake. Ahem. So, as you know, Thich Nhat Hanh, I haven't been to one of his retreats in a while, but he emphasized for many years enjoying your breath.

[35:43]

I one time asked him, so why do you put so much emphasis on enjoying the breath, rather than being mindful of the breath? He said, well, you have to be mindful of the breath in order to enjoy it. And then he said, and anyway, you Westerners are, you know, kind of enjoyment-challenged. In other words, a lot of you are probably type A. Ahem. Ahem.

[36:51]

Ahem. Ahem. So, again, this is different than our usual idea of that joy is something that, you know, might come as some unpredictable, infrequent payoff, and you might be overcome, you know, if it was good enough. You might be overcome with joy. And you would have to rely on, and we tend to, you know, turn toward objects to bring joy, and if we carefully, you know, what the teaching in Buddhism is, you know, is that we, on the whole, are endeavoring to manipulate our experience and our objects of awareness so that they bring us, so that they will bring us joy. And, of course, that effort to manipulate

[37:55]

the objects of awareness so that they behave in the right way and make sure that they offer us joy, that kind of effort is what, you know, is cause of suffering. Because we're efforting to control and manipulate rather than receiving the joy that's possible. So, rather than counting on or relying on the objects to bring joy, which, you know, the classic, of course, is substance abuse, rather than... And, you know, it's a little, again, example of enjoyment challenge because it's not realizing the possibility of practicing, you know, making a practice of joy and allowing for joy

[38:57]

and allowing oneself to be touched and moved. And there's something in here also I'm finding, again, there's something here about, you know, the pace because you have to go at the pace of things in order to have joy. Your mind has to slow down and go at the pace of your breath because if your mind is trying to do three or four breaths in the space of one breath, you're not going to be enjoying it. So this is also known as... In order to have joy, then, in a certain sense, you know, you're cultivating calmness. And you're slowing down to the pace and being at the pace in which things happen and where you can actually meet and connect with something.

[39:59]

You know, I use as an example, and I've probably told you before, but, you know, if you're running past somebody or even walking past them and you go to caress them, it's a slap. If you want to meet something and connect and have some joy of being with something, you have to stop. Right? You have to stop and then show up. And, of course, classically, if you want to have attention, approval, affection, where is it going to come from again? You might have to start practicing it rather than trying to behave in a way that you finally gain it. Right? So our tendency is to try to change and improve and work on our behavior

[41:07]

so that we finally get the attention, approval, and affection we've always wanted that hasn't been... enough of. And the suggestion is, why don't you start practicing it? You know, rather than continuing to try to behave in a way that earns it or gains it. Ahem. And even, you know, a lot of simple things, you know, having a cup of tea, you know, eating a meal. You know, there's a lot of times in our life where there's a possibility of joy and enjoying, savoring, appreciating. And we're often, you know,

[42:09]

the sense of being too busy or, you know, we're watching television or reading a book while we eat or, you know, reading the newspaper with breakfast. How are you going to enjoy something? And so many... And so one of the things that happens, you know, with the Type 8 tendency is, because it's so, you know, stressful to be concerned about all the things you have to do and trying to do more than is possible and that you can't even do that much for even one day, then you find behaviors to do that are distracting you from that. That distract you from what happens to you when you get into the mind of all the things you have to do and how much stress and anxiety comes up. So then you find things to distract yourself so to get away from the pressure. And of course then that leads to more pressure because now you're doing less. And you still haven't really gotten the joy

[43:10]

because you're relying on, you know, you're not really getting joy, you're getting a distraction from your distress and taking on, you know, a lot. Okay. This is a little bit like the, you know, the poem in Rumi where he says, you miss the garden because you want a stray fig from a random tree. Where is that tree? Let yourself be silently drawn

[44:14]

by the stronger pull of what you really love. Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of, you know, what moves you, what touches you. Thank you, blessings. So if you have any questions or comments, I'll take a few minutes for that and then we'll take a few minutes to sit quietly before we finish. Yes. Instead of looking for attention and approval, you know, how do we have to, you know, look for it ourselves? No, you give it to yourself. Yeah. And some of us are sort of retarded

[45:16]

at doing that kind of giving. And so, you know, we need to practice at it. Awkwardly. I mean, besides just like you said, giving yourself a break, how might that look? You know, I'm very pragmatic. So how might that look, you know, if you're... You know, because it's really easy to get into the distracting mode, which is not the same as giving yourself all the attention that you want. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, this is, you know, one of the basic, certainly one of the basic aims of meditation. That you could sit and actually for a change be with your experience and give, you know, give attention to what's going on. Give attention to, oh, you're thinking a lot.

[46:16]

And, you know, it's very common for people to say, I had no idea I was thinking this much. Does meditation cause that? And, you know, a lot of these things in our life, as far as how do they look like, it's again, you know, let yourself be silently drawn. And because these things, and it's part of the challenge of, you know, as a teacher or, you know, whether you're a teacher or you're a student, you know, it's part of the challenge is there's not some directions or thing to do because then you're not doing that. Now you're doing the directions and efforting and, you know, implementing and imposing and, you know, strategizing and, you know,

[47:19]

now you're doing all of that again. So this is also something, so this is more the kind of thing like you hope to stumble upon what it looks like. So you develop a limp. So that you're more likely to stumble. So you're on the lookout for, you're ready to look for your stumbling as the possible entry, you know, into this rather than looking for how you would successfully go there. So you're, it's kind of more, anyway, it's kind of more that kind of, you know, endeavor. Yeah. So you mean that, that if the issue is failure, that it's good to fail?

[48:22]

Would you actually strive to have things fall apart? Without striving, of course. I don't, you know, know that it's necessary to strive to have things fall apart. They usually do that without your having to work at it. In my experience, you know. I'm remembering now how I used to work at, you know. It's amazing to me, you know, how, you know, the part about, you know, having been at Zen Center and there's a schedule, you know, so there actually is a bell and that's the end of work. But I used to work in the kitchen.

[49:25]

I didn't, you know, have bells. I just did the work that needed to be done. So I was working, you know, more and I didn't have days, regular days off. So I would just, I would just do that until, you know, I collapsed. And I'd collapse for two or three days and then I'd start up again. And it's been like that in various versions of that ever since. You know, you just, you just, so I don't know that you, but I was never, I was never aiming to collapse. I just didn't understand, you know, how important it was to actually, you know, not, you know, to just do a specific amount of something and then, you know, take time for going for a walk and enjoying the fresh air and seeing friends and, you know, and visiting with people.

[50:30]

I'm starting to enjoy visiting with people. I haven't had time for people for years. So the, partly what I'm hearing in your question, whether it's, you know, accurate or not, is that for those of us who are busy with all the things we feel like we need to take care of and do, the sense is if I wasn't doing that, things would fall apart. And, but this is also some, you know, being, but the interesting thing here is that the more you slow down, the more you can actually get done. I mean, I've been going, I've been going too fast to get anything done. I can't do any writing because writing is too slow. So I'm going faster than that. My mind is going faster and I'm thinking about all the things I need to get done. So to take time to write means I'm not doing all those other things,

[51:31]

so how can I take time to write? And so, and then a lot of things are like that, where my mind, and for a while I wasn't able to pay the bills or deposit the checks because I don't have time for that. You know, because I'm, because I have too much to do to do that. But then it wasn't like I was doing anything. I was just, you know, in my mind, worrying like if I don't do these things, it's all going to fall apart. So anyway, all of it's, it's, it's, there's a certain irony to all, there's various ironies to this. But, you know, it's often when things fall apart that we kind of take some time to reevaluate and sort through, like, what was I, what am I doing here? Do I really need to be doing all of this? And do I really need to? And I'm also having to sort of, you know, I mean, you all know that the war in Iraq was my fault.

[52:36]

I mean, you know, my, my practice wasn't good enough and, because if it had been good enough, you know, we wouldn't have done that and Bush wouldn't have won that election, you know. I mean, because I've been doing this for years and I guess I wasn't good enough, you know. But, anyway, it reminded me of Paul Grilley's mantra, you know. We're running out of time here, but I was at a yoga workshop with Paul Grilley teaching yin yoga and he had a mantra, he said, for when we were doing the poses, nobody suffers like I suffer. There's something wrong with me. I am inadequate in some way. Om, shanti, om. So, if that's what's happening, then you're doing that mantra.

[53:41]

You know, it's time to, you know, shift, you know, do something differently to, to care, you know, to really, to sort out what needs to, what, what, what to do right now to carefully sort that out over and over again. What, what can I do right now and, and I'll do this for 15 minutes. You know, they've taken high school kids, you know, who can't study. Oftentimes the kids who are the most brilliant can't study because they, they realize how much there is to study and they're so, and there's, and they're overwhelmed by the whole thing. And so they, they have them study for 15 minutes, reward, 15 minutes, reward. And then pretty soon they can study because you need to be able to focus on one thing, you know, this moment, mastering, you know, Dogen says, entering one moment, mastering one moment. Let's sit quietly for a few minutes here to end,

[54:50]

a couple of minutes.

[54:50]

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