Accept. I bow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Well, I have a lot to talk about today. A lot of either, you know, ground to cover or uncover. We'll see. Sometimes I think it would be nice if I could just, you know, have to directly communicate to you without bothering to have to actually talk. And I was reminded

[01:03]

of in one sutra or another, they talk about all the different, the different Buddha realms and how there's one where the Dharma is conveyed through smells. We could just, we'd all sit here and just breathe and smell. Of course, it might not be all that great if it's anything like sitting. You could have some pretty bad smells, I guess. It really is a wilderness out there, isn't it? I mean, when you sit down and you get quiet and it's pretty wild. There's a lot going on and you could get lost there. And in fact, we do sometimes. So today I want to talk about a little bit about, well, various things. One of them is Manjushri. He cuts through

[02:07]

that lost stuff, you know. He's got a sword and he kind of clears the brush a little bit, you know, and sort of makes a path. You know, that's what Manjushri does. Anyway, we'll get to that. I find it very, you know, it's only in the last few months, actually, I started thinking again about the offering we make at mealtime. We make a Buddha tray. We offer it, put it on the altar. And for years, I thought that was a rather dumb thing to do. I mean, like, who cares? You know? And you sort of, you know, trot up there and the drum sounds and, you know, like,

[03:07]

who's kidding who, you know? What is this about? And let's get real, folks, you know. And, you know, after all the little statues there on the altar or whatever, you know, Buddha or Manjushri or whoever it is, you know, they don't eat it. And, you know, they might be smelling it, you know. They might be enjoying, you know, in some way, the aromas that come from the food. And you make, we make this offering and then we never hear a thing, you know? We offer it and then

[04:12]

the Buddha never says, oh, thank you very much for the wonderful lunch or that barley mushroom soup was really delicious. Or, you know, I love those yams. Or that soup the other day was kind of strange. You never hear a thing. You put the food up there and then it just sort of like, so? And it's only, you know, a few weeks ago I started thinking about this and how, in a way, how much that's like our life. We do these various things and then whatever comes back, you know? You know, does somebody like it, not like it? Is it any good? Is it bad? And once in a while something comes back and actually we sort of worry sometimes that something might come back. And other times we wish something would come back. Like, oh, how nice of you to go to all that

[05:18]

effort. Or, thank you very much. Or, you're really a nice person and we appreciate that you're offering this or whatever. But, you know, mostly nothing much happens. And certainly if one's effort is organized around the response that's going to come back and getting a particular response to come back, you know, it's going to be pretty frustrating, isn't it? You know, to try to get back what you sort of wanted. This is a kind of, well, it's a kind of way that we tend to kind of reference ourselves externally. And, you know, Trungpa Rinpoche said at one point, something like, self or ego is the paranoid suspicion that you exist.

[06:23]

And based on this, based on this paranoid suspicion that you exist, then you want to know how does this, how is this existence doing? Is it doing well? Not so well? Could it be doing better? Is it doing worse? What is going to happen to me? What will become me? So, one of the ways we want to check this is what's coming back? What's coming from the world? And maybe if I behave differently or better, something better will come back from the world. And in a certain sense, Buddhism says, well, yeah, that's true. If you do good, good happens. And if you do evil, bad, bad happens. Or in the Abhidharma, they say sometimes unpleasant states are the result of your bad karma and pleasant states are good karma. But it's not as though

[07:31]

practice is really about accumulating a large bank account of good karma so that you could live off of that, you know, indefinitely. That's, you know, the realm of the gods or whatever that realm is where everything is really nice. And it goes on for a really long time. But you don't learn much about Dharma that way, because you just hang out and enjoy things until it comes to an end. Anyway, so you can, and then you never know if something bad happens. Is it something you did in this lifetime? Or maybe it's from 18 dozen lifetimes ago. You know, all this stuff can be happening, and it just may be that it doesn't have anything to do with what you're doing in this lifetime. You already did all that stuff. You know, so we never quite know. My goodness, if we're going to be good enough in this lifetime to avoid the calamities that might otherwise be

[08:33]

flawless. Anyway, you know, this is sort of getting around to, to come back to it. If you, when one organizes one's life around what one is going to get back, it's endlessly kind of frustrating and painful. One can never get enough, you know, good things to come and avoid enough of the bad things. And yet one can keep trying to talk oneself into making a different kind of effort, or maybe I said the wrong thing, and if I hadn't done that, then this would, and then we can try to kind of, you know, work it all out. As opposed to this, you see, we put together an offering, so to speak, and we put it out in the world, and then we bow, and then we walk away.

[09:39]

And we don't even wait to see, in a sense, what does Buddha think about this? What does the world think about this? And the point is, you know, to make your offering. And let it go at that. So this is what I tried to do in teaching, giving talks, and so on. And, you know, if you've been a cook, or any of you, you don't even have to be a cook. We all know that, you know, people have different tastes, different inclinations, tendencies, etc. And so, you know, one day, if you make the oatmeal thick, people say, oh, it's so thick, you have to chew it, and then the next, somebody says that, and then if you make it thinner, somebody comes and says, well, it's so thin, how are we supposed to last the morning on this? You know, in other

[10:44]

words, no matter what you do, there's no way to have it sort of like, just go over, you know, like, and that's your Buddha. Buddha supposedly just sits back, or whatever, and talks, or, you know, does stuff, and everybody gets it in just the right way. Wow. Anyway, it seems that whatever we do, it will go out in the world and impact in different ways. But we make this offering, and we bow, and we offer it. It's some sincere offering. So I make various offerings, and then, I'm not, you know, I try as much as I can to leave it up to you, what you do with the offering. And when I make an offering, I don't mean you have to swallow it,

[11:46]

or, you know, anything in particular. And some things will be more appropriate for you at one time, and some things for another time, and some things are useful today, or maybe tomorrow, or, you know, maybe you don't particularly relate to it. And that's the way it goes. So I can't, you know, there's not so much I can do about that, you know, so I leave it to you. How do you receive? And then, you know, the practice of receiving things is another kind of practice, which is how to, you know, if one wants, if one wishes, one can practice receiving, as Dogen suggests. Don't complain about the quality or the quantity of ingredients,

[12:53]

just handle them, take them in with sincerity and wholeheartedness, examine them, see what you can do with it. If it's not useful right now, set it aside. Some things for you to use them, you know, like tea. It has to be cured, it has to be dried, it has to be roasted. Certain things that, you know, are coming to you, you may have to work with in some way over time to make it useful. Some things may be useful right away. Some things you set aside, some parts you discard, you sort through it. Today, I'd like to bring up for you an expression attributed to Ungo Dojo, the successor to Tozan.

[14:12]

He said, one who has comprehended has a mind like a fan in the winter or like a mouth grown moldy. Apparently, I wondered, you know, what good is a fan in winter? And that's exactly the point. You don't use a fan in the wintertime. So, one who has comprehended has a mind like a fan in the winter, a mind that is unused, not being used, or like a mouth grown moldy from disuse. This is not a thing that you can force. You are already like this. If you are such a person, you will want to attain such a thing.

[15:23]

Since you already are such a person, why bother about attaining such a thing? I think we've, you know, sitting, we've noticed quite clearly and vividly that we, you know, we have a stream or flow of experiences. We have physical sensations and thoughts and emotions and isn't that just the way it is?

[16:28]

I mean, is there some other possibility to not have this flow of thoughts and feelings and sensations? When something appears in front of us, we see it. Sounds arise and we hear them. Thoughts come, we notice them. And if nothing else, we notice. You know, back in the 60s, we used to say, oh, wow, man. I mean, at some point, what else can we say? We say, oh, wow, this is pretty amazing, isn't it?

[17:39]

All this stuff happens, keeps on happening. And it's rather ungraspable and unfathomable. And this is not something you have to force. This is the way it is. You're already such a person. A person with this kind of, all these things happen. So what's the, you know, problem about that? And the problem is we, you know, the mind gets activated and the mouth starts to work.

[18:47]

And, you know, we think we could tidy up a little bit. So it's a bit of a mess here. Let's get things straightened out. You know, we can rearrange the furniture or, you know, we can clear some land. Let's cut down the wilderness. Let's grow some nice crops here. Let's grow a nice crop of, you know, following the breath. Let's hack down all that other stuff, that wild stuff, that inarticulate stuff, that overly articulate stuff. Let's whack it down, have a nice crop of quiet, following of the breath. Oh, how sweet it is. And this is kind of a busy mind. You know, so this mind goes around and when something comes up that isn't the appropriate thing, you know, well, let's have a mind that's

[19:54]

in disuse. So the mind that is in, you know, like the fan in winter, well, let me try to force this a little bit. Why don't I? Why don't I try to make it like that? So why don't I whack down these things that come up so that my mind will have the appearance of nothing going on. If I kill it fast enough, you know, as it arises, if I attack it soon enough, it will be nice and quiet here, won't it? And then we forget though that attacking things like that is really a lot of disturbance. You know, and who did that? Who created all that disturbance? So, you know, one Zen teacher said, sweeping away the dust. For 30 years, I tried to sweep away the dust. For 30 years, I tried to sweep the dust away before I realized that that sweeping was itself dust. Now, when I raise my eyes, it appears vividly before me.

[21:12]

Sometimes it's so, sometimes though it's hard to notice the way in which we're sweeping, that we actually are sweeping, and that that is the dust that we're stirring up. And it's hard to realize that the dust that's already arising is itself, you know, already dust, or, you know, we could in a sense say, blessed. And I think the original meaning, or one of the meanings of blessed is blood-soaked. It's already blood-soaked, you know, through and through with our life. We already are, you know, such a person. Since you already are such a person, well, why bother about trying to attain such a thing? And that effort to attain such a thing, some kind of forcing,

[22:33]

some kind of what would the picture of that attainment look like? And then why don't I try to create that kind of picture? It would look calm, and so on, and so then we try to create that. And our mind gets very busy trying to create the kind of mind or being that we're supposed to have, or the body that we're supposed to have. You know, some sign or indication that, yes, you're practicing, yes, I'm practicing well now, because look what's finally happened. Look what's finally arisen. So I'd like to talk a little bit more about this kind of effort that we make,

[23:41]

a kind of mistaken effort, how we use our mind or work our mouth in such a way that it's creating, in a sense, more dust. One of the, and I think for me, one interesting or useful way to think about this is that Buddhism sometimes talks about thought coverings and feeling or emotion coverings. Covering means that, you know, we put a cover over something. So you can sit, be sitting, and you have many experiences, but then you can say meditation is boring. That covers it, doesn't it? You know, like, excuse me, but what percent of the time, and nothing else happened?

[24:44]

So then maybe you can get in an argument, you know, somebody else says, no, meditation isn't boring. Meditation is really interesting. Oh, meditation is, no, meditation is really painful. Oh, meditation is really, oh, it's calm and it's bliss. It's repose. Who is right and who is wrong? So we get a nice cover on there. And then we take that to be reality. Meditation is boring. I'd like to do something more interesting. I'm leaving to a Sahara now. Thank you very much. Hmm. So this is, you know, a simple example, but we have a thought and we put it over what was originally a kind of ungraspable, unfathomable, inexhaustible, bottomless reality.

[25:49]

Sazen, meditation. And the convenient thing about this is now we know what to do, how to relate to this thing that we're calling this thing, which is not exactly a thing called meditation. Now we know what to do. If it's boring, well, I'll go do something else. Or if it's painful, I'll go do something else or, you know, and sometimes there's various times, you know, we can, we start to, you know, we'll notice that there's various things we can notice. One is that, as I've been saying, that this description we have doesn't really cover meditation. That actually meditation is inexhaustible, bottomless, unfathomable. And one can't exactly say what meditation is, with some finality. And really what one has to say is,

[26:54]

I've been doing meditation in a way that was boring. I've been doing meditation in a boring way. And where does, where does boring come from? Is it in the supposed object? Where does painful come from? Is it in the object? You know, what is difficult? What is easy? Where does that come from? How do we decide? But it's convenient for us sometimes to, you know, and it's not the point, you know, there's not, it's not that thinking is a problem. We need to think and we need to say these things. We need to be able to say things in words and to make decisions and plans and do things. The problem is that when the thinking, that the thinking is repetitive

[28:00]

and habitual and fixed and sort of stuck. And as reality, this unfathomable wilderness of reality comes up, it would be, it can be kind of overwhelming. So it would be kind of nice to just put a simple little label on it and know how to relate to it. This is the nice thing about thinking. If we think something, then we know what to do. You know what to do with something good, right? You grasp it and you know what to do with something bad. You push it away. Like we all know that. Isn't that what you do? So once you know whether it's good or bad and whether it's pleasant or unpleasant, then you know what to do. And this is all based on being able to cover it, put a convenient label on it, make it into a definable object

[29:01]

rather than something that's inexhaustible. Because then you'd be kind of lost and you'd have to kind of just carefully be feeling your way along and it might be a little overwhelming and my God, what do I do with this? Do you understand? So we'd like to be able to sum it up in a word or two. Good, bad, right, wrong. Do this, not that. And emotions are another kind of covering. You can feel sadness or sorrow or grief or joy, pleasure. And when we jump to the feeling, oh, am I angry? And even though we experience this

[30:10]

rage or whatever, then what are we experiencing anymore of what's behind that? What's underneath that? And what's the other side of things? So sometimes, you know, if one is angry and sometimes we notice that when I stop being angry, I feel sad. Sometimes underneath anger is sadness and I got angry because you touched my sadness and you made me aware of my sadness and you shouldn't do that. What you should be doing is helping me ignore the fact that underneath I feel sad.

[31:15]

That's what you should be doing. And if you don't do that, I'm going to be angry with you because my sadness underneath is really painful and I'm very sensitive to it. And I would really appreciate it if you didn't let me know that it was there. So don't talk to me like that anymore. You know, this is a kind of one kind of anger we have. It covers things. And underneath sadness and underneath grief, it covers one thing after another. So in a way, this brings us back to what is the ground finally?

[32:19]

You know, what is the ground of our being? Zhao Zhou said, the monk asked Zhao Zhou, how do I get to the summit of the mystic peak? Zhao Zhou said, I won't answer that. Why not? If I answered, you'd think you were on level ground. Is there actually level ground or a ground that is the summit of the mystic peak? Is there any ground? Is there anything finally you can say or feel that's solid that you can count on or depend on? Meditation is boring. Is that a good ground? I'm angry. Is that ground? So in the story, Indra put the blade of grass in the ground.

[33:23]

So at some point, we need to be able to distinguish between what is ground and what is the blade of grass and to remind ourself that which is which. The thought is a blade of grass. The anger is a blade of grass. The ground is unfathomable and vast and indescribable. Perhaps blood soaked, but indescribable. This is the nature of our being. And we can notice, you know, that what are the things that, you know, one very simple thing is, what are the things that come and that and go? What are those things? And we can notice that all the things that come and go are not ground.

[34:31]

The ground is something that doesn't come and doesn't go. As soon as you worry about attaining such a thing, your worry is about attaining something that is going to go. You will be trying to attain something that is going to go. And you won't be attaining the ground. The ground is already there. You are already such a person. So, in a certain sense, you know, sometimes we, you know, sense, identify a ground with

[35:48]

awareness. To be aware of something is different than, you know, to identify with it. Or it can be at least, you know, different. And awareness is not, you know, not coming, not going in the sense that, you know, Dogen says things like, if you're half awake, that is exactly precisely 100% half awake. If there's some problem about that, it's exactly what it is. And being tired is exactly being tired. And it's unfathomable. Or in the, you know, one bright pearl, all the universe is one bright pearl. And he says, so delusion and wrong thinking and pain, all these things, they're masquerading.

[36:55]

It's really the one bright pearl masquerading. Made to look like something else, you know, with a kind of covering over it. So we can call it confusion or tiredness and something we have to deal with and relate to and do something about. Anyway, I want to suggest a few sort of, you know, basic kinds of tools or practices that you might find useful. If you, you know, work at it a little bit, how to make use of them. Because I think sometimes it seems to me that in Satsang practice, we

[38:02]

are encouraged to just sit and at times we become sort of like the victim of our experience. Like whatever experience we have, well, that's just what happened since I was in and keep sitting. But at the same time, it may be that there's some usefulness to tools at times or techniques or practices. So I've already mentioned now, you know, when a thought, when there's a thought or an emotion, one of the things to do is try to look underneath. What's going on underneath? Can you pick up the lid? Is meditation just boring? What exactly is meditation? Look closely. Something makes you angry? What is underneath the anger?

[39:10]

What is it about? So this is, you know, at one level, this is a little bit like as thoughts and emotions arise to come back to your body, back to your breath, back to inhaling and exhaling. But as you know, that doesn't always work. And one can find that one is quite involved with thinking or quite involved with emotions. And so at this time, it's useful to be able to, it may be useful to make a practice of noticing the thinking, noticing the emotion. And part of this noticing, if noticing doesn't seem to,

[40:16]

if the thinking still seems to be rather sturdy and encrusted, one might try to notice, is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant? Because this is, you know, the subtle way. It's very hard to notice sometimes the subtle way in which we're trying to do some sweeping. And basically when thoughts stick around, there's some way in which we're involved with them. And when emotions stick around, there's some way in which we participate in that. And it's not so simple that, oh, I'm just overcome with anger. Well, I just have all these thoughts. I just, you know, and it's sort of like, this is what I mean by being the victim of it. It's not that simple that we're just the victim of our, you know, mind that is resistant or, you know, it thinks, it's still going on thinking.

[41:20]

What's wrong with that resistant mind? Why would it do such a thing? And having some feeling about something, you know, emoting. And so it's very important to see if you can notice the way in which you participate in it. And the way we participate is, first of all, is it pleasant or unpleasant? Can you notice that? And usually if it's pleasant, then you note. Then you try to notice, is there some subtle way in which you're grasping it when it's pleasant? And averting from it when it's unpleasant? This is how we feed these things. So this is also like, I've talked with some of you about this, but this is also like, as your thinking comes up,

[42:20]

you know, do you right away, you take, we take, we put some reality in it. We invest it. We, you know, I asked you the other day, night, you know, we say, enlightenment is blossoming right now. Do you buy that? You know, probably not, or maybe not, or who knows? I don't know. But, you know, but if the thought comes up that this sitting is really painful, oh, yes, it is. I'll buy that. This practice is really weird. They're all going around in those black robes. Oh, I'll buy that. So we buy lots of things. Do you notice when you buy into something like that? Or when you don't buy into it, and you know, you think, um, boy, you really are, you think about yourself, boy, you really are not such a good student.

[43:22]

You know, you, you know, you think you're sincere and trying hard, but you still can't sit still the way you should be able to by now. Do you buy that? Or do you say, well, no, but I'm really a sincere student. I'm really trying hard. You know, do you argue with it then? That's also buying into the reality of what you just thought. So we tend to buy into the reality of the thought, and we don't, and then we don't notice that we bought in. Then we say, oh, these thoughts go on and on. But who bought in? This is not very pleasant arguing about all this. And I'd like to get rid of it. But again, you know, these thoughts, they aren't the ground. These thoughts are things that come and go. Then we can notice this is thinking. This is not ground. The ground is, is like the space,

[44:26]

the space that everything can arise and disappear in. This is ground. This ground, the space that things arise and disappear in, doesn't come and doesn't go. And so it's a kind of function of, in a sense, wisdom of this sword to make this discrimination between what is ground and what is thinking and what is anger and what is sadness, and to be able to notice which are the things that come and go and what the ground must be. The ground is all of this. We're not going to do anything about the ground. It's not something we fix one way or another.

[45:27]

So this, so you can try noticing this pleasant, unpleasant, grasping, averting, seeing if you can catch how you participate. And the same with emotion, feelings, joy or sorrow or anger. Is it pleasant? Is it unpleasant? Sazen is boring. That's real, yes. I take that to be real. I'm such and such a kind of person. I'm a, I'm a good person. I'm a sincere person. I'm a good Zen student. No, you're not. Well, yes, I am. You know, and then taking that to be real. I'm angry. And then taking anger to be real as though I have to do something about it. Sometimes we say all dharmas are undisturbed, isolated.

[46:44]

Anger is something that happened the last moment. Now this moment you want to do something about it. It's already in the past. So this moment you get busy sweeping it. But the dharma of anger is, is completely undisturbed. It arose. That moment was arose and passed away. You know, the thought arose and passed away. Is there an abiding reality now? A continuing, a reality that continues such that now in this moment you could do something about it? That you could take some action that would do something about that? Or maybe that could do something about the it that is arisen and gone. To make sure that it doesn't come back in the future. What action are you going to take to make sure that it doesn't come back? Because I don't like it. It's too painful. In the long run, you know, we have to make these kind of distinctions.

[47:56]

This is what we're learning actually. To distinguish between what is pleasant and what is painful. And what is, you know, some harmonious and peaceful way to live our life. As opposed to a way of life that creates more suffering for us. So we're trying to make these distinctions. And the question is, are we doing it accurately? Carefully? Or are we putting a label on something? And then because we put that label on it and we know that anger is bad. Or we know that love is good. You know, we can grasp something and we can avert from something else. And we can get, you know, we can sort it out and we can have a nice little garden. And if we're trying to do that, we know how disruptive that can be. It never quite happens like that. So, you know, mostly, I mean, over time and sitting, we get used to things not being quite

[48:57]

graspable and feeling our way along and picking up each thing, trying to see what it is. What's some good way to work with it and finding out. And not knowing and not depending on thoughts or emotions to be the handle. That we can grasp. Reality with and then know what to do. So we say about just being a little bit in the being like in the dark, not knowing, feeling your way along. Examining each experience. Sorting through it. What's valuable? What's useful? What's not? Using what you can, letting go of what you can't. Mm hmm. So when thinking, you know, comes up, it's also like

[50:15]

having, you know, instead of right away buying into it, agreeing with your thinking or disagreeing with your thinking. Oh, you're right. Yeah. Sitting is a drag. Or. Oh, no, I'm really a nicer person than that. How could you say that about me or about somebody else? Or, you know, you're still making these judgments and sitting. You were not supposed to, you know, find fault with things. Then we find fault with ourself for finding fault. Where will it end? You know, so at some point we just have to kind of, you know, nod. You know, it's sort of Japanese at times. Don't you think? Oh, I saw this guy. Do you know I saw this guy? I. So we say, oh, we make a kind of noncommittal kind of agreement. Oh, that's that's one way to look at it.

[51:22]

Yeah, that's you could say that. We don't have to completely agree or try to disagree. This is, you know, there's some way that we can be with our thinking and remind ourself that it's thinking and not really buy into it. This is something, you know, that we actually can practice doing, not buying into it. Oh, you could say that. That's one way to look at it. And there's this. So we have this larger space. You know, the space in which our ground where thoughts arise and disappear and come and go. And we're not setting up one thought against another thought. How could you say such a thing? Well, what about you? You know, why are you so sad? Well, why are you so happy? No, don't you want to relate to sadness? Well, you know, you know, you're always so happy.

[52:26]

You just ignore it all the time. You don't pay any attention to me. It's like, you know, this is going on in our mind and our body. You know, we set up one thing against another. You know, in this effort to kind of, you know, cultivate or, you know, subdue the wilderness. So we need, in sitting, we are cultivating this larger space for some more real ground. And so we also say, for instance, Leslie mentioned the other day about the 8,000 lines, wisdom in 8,000 lines in the Bodhisattva. As we say, Bodhisattva is an unskilled Bodhisattva courses in the skandhas, in the production and stopping of the skandhas. I don't like that thought.

[53:27]

I'm going to get rid of that one. I want that thought. This is coursing in the production and stopping of skandhas. You know, or this feeling. I don't want this one. I want that one. Let me stop this one. Let me have that one. Let this one. Make this one come up. No, get rid of that one. And then we keep track of it, how well we're doing at that. Oh, I must be a good student. Skandhas that are coming up now are pretty great. Or I'm a miserable student. Look at these terrible skandhas that are coming up now. They really hurt. So we say, this is an unskilled Bodhisattva. And a skilled Bodhisattva doesn't course in the skandhas, in the production or stopping of skandhas. And the production doesn't course in producing some and stopping others, sights and sounds and smells. It doesn't course in how well I do this sort of thing.

[54:31]

So when we buy into the thoughts or the emotions as some, you know, having a real reality, you see, this we take to be a ground. And naturally, that ground is very unstable. Some other feeling can come along and disturb our ground. Some other thought can come along and upset our thought, what we thought. Something else can come along because the thoughts and the feelings inherently are things that are going to pass and we can't keep them. But we've set them up to stay there as though they're our ground and they're what's important to our inner being. And mostly, you know, of course, in sitting and in sitting, we have a tremendous, wonderful kind of fire comes through, you know. And all of that goes, an awful lot of it goes, you know. The things that we thought were important and that we were taking to be ground in our life.

[55:45]

And we experience a kind of relief that comes with no longer having this kind of unstable ground. This ground that is, you know, subject to be overwhelmed and undone. Being overwhelmed and undone is another grasp. Being overwhelmed and undone, you know, we say you fall. You're knocked to the ground and you get up on the ground. And because all of this is knocked down, we understand something about our more fundamental ground, which isn't, you know, which isn't level, which isn't the summit, which isn't good, which isn't bad, which isn't right, which isn't wrong. Now, in this story today, we say you're already such a person.

[57:00]

There already is this ground. It's not something you create. And when you, you know, find this ground, when you're on this ground, then you don't use your mind like a fan in winter. Uh, Yoko-san, as you know, also said his teacher asked him,

[58:22]

what are you doing? And he was sitting. He said, I'm not doing anything. His teacher said, if you're not doing anything, you're wasting your time. And Yoko-san said, if I was doing something, I'd be wasting my time. So then the teacher said, what is it that you're not doing? And he said, even a thousand stages couldn't say. So again, this is, you know, the ground, unfathomable, vast, unimaginable.

[60:00]

Isn't it nice the way the blue jay participates in the dharma talk? So uh, I'd also like, uh, just in the closing here to bring up for you again, Suzuki Roshi is saying, uh, the important point is to find out what is the most important point.

[61:07]

This is another kind of tool you can use. If you get involved or caught up in your thinking or your emotion, this kind of question can be something stabilizing for you, a kind of ground. So what's important in this case? What's important this moment? You know, if you get in an argument with yourself or with somebody else, what's important? It's important to express your heart and not abandon your own position. And it's important to listen to somebody else and try to understand. And if you raise the question for yourself, you'll notice it's not so important to

[62:07]

win the argument that one prevails over the other that you've set up. So that can be another kind of stabilizing tool for you. So we say, you know, these kinds of practices in themselves are the ground. These kind of practices in themselves are enlightenment, are realization. To practice like this is the way. You know, there's not some thing that is going to come along because you practice like this. So, in one way or another, looking into, you know, things deeply,

[63:22]

acknowledging the bottomless quality of life and the ungraspability, and at the same time, you know, then we act. And our action then instead of, you know, comes out of, you know, being with things rather than in some way at odds with things and trying to arrange everything. Anyway, that's sort of another talk, so I'm going to stop now and thank you for your practice. Thank you.

[64:19]

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