Yeah, that's interesting. I don't know how to say exactly, and that you would have some particular aim. I don't know that you need to have a particular aim, but part of what this is about is, as many of you have mentioned, as a teacher or as a student you're studying. You're studying how to be a teacher, you're studying how to be a student. And to study that is to then notice, oh, I have these kind of problems. Oh, this isn't working. And if you have something that's not working, what can I do? How do I address this? And, you know, we're all going to sort of muddle along. I'm sorry. We're all going to muddle along and, you know, have the problems and issues we have. And one of the things that amazes me about, you know, and partly whether or not you actually become a teacher,

[01:07]

is partly just, you know, it's partly just karma or something, that you end up, that that's your gift, for better or worse. You know, that you, and so we're in the business of, in some sense, realizing what our gift is and then how do I offer my gift. And that may or may not be teaching and it may or may not be yoga teaching. And some yoga teachers will have huge followings and other yoga teachers will have small followings. And, you know, should you be aiming for one or the other? And, you know, you have a certain gift and you have a certain, and then you have, and you have certain problems and then you, you know, you work on them or you don't and your, and your life muddles along. So, but I personally, I personally have an interest. So, you see, that's me. I personally have an interest in all of these things.

[02:08]

And so I have an interest in, you know, aside from yoga or Zen, I study communication skills. You know, I've studied the whole nonviolent communication with Marshall Rosenberg. And I've studied communication skills with other people. I've studied communication skills with speech coaches. And, you know, I read books about it. There's a fabulous book by Deborah Tannen, which is out of print now, I think. You know, you just don't understand about the way men communicate and the way women communicate. And what she points out is usually, you know, people say about their spouses, could you, could you teach him how to talk to me? And usually people don't say, could you teach me how to talk, how I might talk to him in his language? So I'm the kind of person who's interested in learning these various languages, you know,

[03:08]

and how to talk to people under various circumstances. But that's who I am. And this is partly about being a teacher and being a student. And can I just help people over? Do I have to be on the other side of the fence? And partly as a teacher, you know, there are some teachers who say, if you want to spend time with me, you're going to have to be in my world because I'm not going to yours. You live in such a crummy, low class, part of town. You know, frankly, I'm not going to go there, OK? I don't want to go where you are. Thank you anyway. So that's more the male model. You know, the female model is more like, OK, I'll come to your part of town. You know, it's kind of cringy and low class. All right, I'll hang out with you where you are. That's more the second model, you know, rather than you have to join me at my high level. And to me, you know, developing yourself in life has more, you know, the basic conception,

[04:13]

you know, the place we start from is thinking like I ought to establish a mind or a state or a capacity where I can stay and which is where I'm immune. Wouldn't it be nice immunity? If I just do yoga, I won't get old, I won't get sick, I won't get cancer. I won't die if I get enlightenment. You know, it will protect me. Last person, one of the last people who tried that was Uzal Tenzin. You know Uzal Tenzin? Disciple, the successor of Trungpa Rinpoche. He believed he was protected. And then he had unprotected sex with hundreds of people and gave hundreds of people AIDS and died of AIDS. But he was going to be protected because he was enlightened, because he was the enlightened successor, because, you know, so he was protected. So, you know, it's not a good idea to do some practice in order to, you know, that's going to protect you, that give you immunity. There's not, you know, yoga is not going to give you immunity.

[05:17]

Something you'll get to in your 50s, you know, if you're not there yet. The business about immunity. But the basic conception of establishing a place and that you should get back to that. You know, so this has to do with that there's good and there's bad and there's right and there's wrong and there's the way I want to be, the way I should be. I should be awake, I should be enlightened, I should be loving, I should be compassionate. And then how can I do all those things, how can I be those things? And if I end up in some other place, I should get back to that other, you know, to being the way I should. So that's one model of, you know, how you would approach life. And that's what most people are doing. So that's called sticking to something. That's sticking to the way you should be, the right way to be. And then you argue with other people about it, you know.

[06:21]

No, I'm doing it the right way, you're not. I'm compassionate. And then you get all this, you know, it gets very tricky. All that stuff. But anyway, the other model is when you find yourself, when you, you know, is how to bring awareness to each realm that you end up in. So if you end up in a state that you didn't aim to have, instead of trying to like, oh no, what am I doing here? I need to get back over there. You say, oh, what is this place like? How do I live here? How do they live here? Who is this? Who are these people? And can I live with these people? And can I find out what they do? And I would be willing to take on the life in that place. And find out, you know, if I'm a sad person, one idea is, how do people say, if you're sad, and then people say, well, what's wrong? And so, you see, the whole approach in our, you know, on the whole in our culture is

[07:29]

that if you could identify what's wrong, why are you sad? Oh, well, you know, the mail was late. All right, well, let's, let's go and make sure that the mail is never late again. Because then you won't have to be sad. And if, or because, well, I'm sad because she insulted me. Oh, well, let's make sure that she never insults you again. Let's just tell them how to behave so that they never insult you and what they need to say and what they, you know, shouldn't say. And let's get them to do that. And let's make them do that by emotionally coercing them that we're going to hate them if they don't. Or we're going to be really depressed and discouraged that, you know, they can't stop insulting us. You know, so let's just get them to behave differently so I don't, when I'm insulted by, you know, so that they just don't do that, that's making me sad. So all of this is just, it's a, it's a name. So rather than, you know, so, you know, so, but our, our whole way of life is predicated on

[08:31]

we could control all that stuff. We would never have to be sad because we could, we can develop our capacity to control me and others so that we just don't have to go there anymore. Now the model, what I think of as the more superior model or a better way to actually be happy would be why don't you be willing to be sad and find out how to be willing to hang out with people who are sad and when you're sad, why don't you be willing to be with somebody who's sad and, and, you know, that's number two, that's, that's rather than the knowledge of how to get you out of sadness and how to control things better and have this skill set. This is like, well, if you're sad, let's hang out together, let's be sad, why don't we? And, oh, and, and what happened? And how does it feel? And you wouldn't, you wouldn't right away aim to, how do I get out of this place and back to where I should be? So I'm interested in, you know, so I've done communication things and so I, I just get interested in all those things

[09:36]

but then other people don't seem to, you know. So this is all very interesting and then so you'll have to see what you're finally interested in. You know, it's not like you need to develop more, more of being the masculine or that you need to or something. It's like, well, where does your life take you and where did the problems of your life lead you? And what do you do with all those things? And so at, at some point we're also talking about, you know, for lack of a better word, I love Thomas More's expression, why don't you develop or cultivate your poetic imagination? That's pretty wide. And he says, you could, you know, there's a lot of books on relationships but, you know, finally as far as I can, he says, finally what he's interested in is poetic imagination. You dream up. We're all dreaming up what to do. And we could, and, and so why don't we give ourselves permission to dream up our life?

[10:43]

You know, and dream up how we're going to relate to people rather than, oh, I need to this or out of that. Or, boy, I should, you know, I need to know more of this or, you know, I need to know more of that or out of this or out of that. But it's kind of like you dream up things. So we're, we're in the business of, you know, permission to dream. And this all gets very wild and unpredictable. And we don't know whether it's going to work or not. And it's scary, as a number of people have mentioned, to stand up with a glass and, you know, open your mouth, you know, because you don't know what will happen and you're just, and you're just dreaming up what to do. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. And you can't guarantee that it's going to work. And you can't guarantee that everybody will love you, whether it's in a yoga class or just walking down the street or just in this room here. There's no way I can open my mouth and talk and guarantee everybody's just going to be delighted.

[11:47]

They are loving me. Ooh, great. Because at some point somebody is going to, how could you have said that? What's wrong with you anyway? You know, and there's no way to do that. So it's better to let people, you know, have their reactions. And then you sort of try to, I mean, I'm interested. And partly the problem is that you don't hear from people who don't like what you do because they never talk to you. It's sort of too bad. But how are you going to find out if they didn't talk to you? And then they go away and they say, well, he should have known better. Yes, thanks. I was just going to intuit, you know, all of that. Thank you anyway. Let me say a little bit more now about my I want to talk. Well, a couple of things here. And. All right.

[12:53]

I want to spend a few minutes. Oh, gosh, there's so much to talk about. But. By the way, so, you know, I tend to, as a teacher, emphasize the second side of this, you know, find out for yourself, know for yourself, dream up your life. And at the same time, I don't mean that, you know, skills or techniques or practices are not useful. They're incredibly useful. But the problem will be, you know, you know, again, it's like, how do you understand these things? So for me, what I'm interested in, you could say is how to practice forms. As a way to be liberated. Or as a way to wake up, how do you you know, why would you practice forms in order to wake up?

[13:59]

As opposed to practicing forms in order to get it right. So if you're not careful, you whether it's yoga or meditation or any number of things, you could teach you could teach skills and. Bodies of knowledge as being about, you know, whether you understand or you don't understand or you have it right or you have it wrong. And then you could aim to be right. But there's another way of practicing forms in order to wake up. OK, now, in a simple sense, any of us could wake up any time. Partly, you know, any moment we could be awake and then there's moments when we're more asleep. So partly this is a matter of. And instead, it's the idea that being awake.

[15:02]

Is knowing where you are. Knowing how you are. Knowing when you are. Are you three? Six months, eight years? Are you 30? When when are you? But. If if we just said to one another, well, let's be awake now, why don't we practice being awake? And so why don't we practice? In other words, to be awake would be to actually experience your life. And as you know, the problem is I'm willing to experience some things and I'm not willing to experience others. So what I'm interested in is how to control my experience. So I only have the experiences I want to have and not the ones I don't want to have. Thank you anyway. So I'd rather not just experience everything. I'd like to just experience the things I want to experience. How awake can you be then to understand this problem?

[16:08]

So we tend to be more interested in control, which is about how to have the experiences I want to have. And implicitly. This means you have a posture or an attitude. Now, so this is how it relates to my world, yoga, gym. So if you want to experience one thing and not something else, what do you do? Then you arrange yourself in what you think of as the best way you can to meet what you want to meet and to not meet something else. And to duck around this and to aim for that. And you have it unconsciously in your body what your approach to life is. How do you do it? How do you do you? And these are decisions and we, you know, behaviors, modes, postures, attitudes that we learned before we were conscious, before we knew what we were doing.

[17:19]

And that, you know, have allowed us to survive and show up here. And now we say, like, well, how do I, how do I, could I become free of this? Because it turns out the way I do me is limiting me. So, you know, people are interested in all kinds of things. Like some people want to learn how to, they realize, like, I, I don't get angry. Or gee, maybe I could be willing to be angry. I don't do this. I don't do that. I've limited myself. I don't speak up for myself. Why don't I speak up for myself? I might hurt somebody's feelings. Oh, well, I decided to protect them, you know, from now on. So I have to protect them from me because I'm a bad person. So I better not say what I mean and what I want because they were going to have trouble hearing it. And nobody's ever acknowledged, you know, what I want. And they've always been hard on me when I want something.

[18:21]

And they told me that I shouldn't want anything. And, oh, what a good girl you are for not wanting anything and et cetera. Okay? Does any of this sound familiar? You know, we learned how to be me. And at some point being me, the way I do it, it's a limitation. I can't say what I want. You know, I can't express my love or my compassion or my joy. I am doing my mode of repertoire of behaviors that has gotten me here. And it's been pretty good and successful. And how do I get out of that? Now, if you start doing yoga or meditation, and yoga is pretty amazing like this, but you start taking postures which are no longer you, and actually to the extent that you can take on postures and alignments that are beyond and different than your usual repertoire,

[19:23]

boy, that can be really liberating. Right? That's like you could move out into places like you've never been before. You free yourself from the way you've done it. You know, there's a certain way that, however, you know, I can exaggerate these things. I went to Redwood High School, and there was 200, 300 kids there. And they're all kind of sitting there, and they've got their headphones backwards. And I said, you know, like, let's, you know, after a while, I was saying, like, we could try meditating. So one thing you might want to do is just like sit right in the middle of your life, huh? And you're not leaning to the right. You're not leaning to the left. And this we call in Zen freedom because you could move to the right. You could move to the left. You could move forward. You could move back. If you're over here, how much further can you go? You've got yourself in a corner. So implicitly, your body posture is, you know, how you limit it to yourself and, you know, to a certain repertoire of behaviors and postures and attitudes.

[20:33]

And I just hang out over here in the corner because actually nobody's interested in me. And, you know, I don't really like it much and whatever. You know, you do this whole thing. So why don't you just right in the middle. So the whole room went, ooh, I don't think so. Actually, right there in any particular form is liberation from you, the way you've done you, the way that you had your shoulders, your arms. You know, there's ways you can do it. And, you know, mostly what we do, you know, one of the things you can do is like you could let your shoulder blades come up your back. Your shoulders come up towards your ears. You can shorten the back of your neck. If I sit down like this, you know, this is the classic way to cut your body off from your mind.

[21:38]

Like I don't have a body. Ooh, it's pretty cool up here in my head. And if you want to coerce yourself before others can, shorten the back of your neck. How small can you make yourself? So once you, when you start doing asana, it's like you're going to go ahead and be big and full, you know, and you're going to be fully embodied. You're going to fully manifest. And in a certain sense, you know, you're changing your habitual consciousness from the way you habitually embody yourself. Your consciousness, you're putting your consciousness into your body and more fully embodying your body with your consciousness. And that is power. That is powerful. That is liberating. That you, that your consciousness, and there's, there's an implicit in that is generosity, compassion, you know, because you're generous with your consciousness.

[22:47]

That your consciousness can go out to your hands and to your feet and to your hips and your back and your consciousness to go to all these places. It's very generous of you to share your consciousness with the rest of your body. Because the tendency in life is for consciousness to find what we call in Zen a nest or a den and then hang out there. And the nest or den is this place that you found that you thought was pretty good, you see, where it was safe and where you're protected. And if you're lucky, you can get some nice things to come into there one way or another, and you can kind of have this nice place. And this is, well, anyway. So, you're implicitly, you know, you're extending your consciousness throughout your body. You're becoming more fully embodied and more parts of your body are alive. And you have a, and then, you know, the back of your neck is lengthening, your spine is, and your chest. Your chest now, and the energy now in your chest instead of being, no, I don't have a heart.

[23:54]

I'm not going to feel what's there because it might be painful. Just in case, I just won't feel it, period, because it might be painful. So, I'm going to go ahead and just be big and full and vast. And I'm going to notice, I'm going to be able, I'm going to be willing to have a heart and a stomach and a body, legs. So, to practice asana implicitly is to free yourself from you, the way you've been doing you. Now, there's two things that can happen. One is, you could believe that doing those other postures and things was better than you. So, you could, instead of it being attached to the way you were doing you, you could become attached to doing the postures better than others. Now, how liberating is that?

[24:56]

First of all, you were liberating yourself from the way you did you, but now you're switching your attachment, instead of being attached to how you used to do you, now you attach to asana and perfecting asana. So, at some point, you might notice that actually to do this asana is also then to realize who you are and to no longer to be attached to amazing asana, but to use asana as to wake up and to realize where you are, who you are, what you are, what you're feeling, your feelings, your thoughts, your being, your sense of life. So, there's, for instance, apparently, Picasso. Now, Picasso, as far as I know, has never been noted for being particularly compassionate, skillful, wise,

[26:03]

but apparently, at least at some point, he had some students and he was teaching his students. He had them practice drawing a perfect circle, which is not so different than asana practice. Now, is the point of this to draw a perfect circle? And if you draw a perfect circle, then we can say, congratulations, now you can draw a perfect circle. Aren't you great? Oh, this is fabulous. Oh, yes, I am great. I can draw a perfect circle. So, how useful is that, you see? But, in fact, if you practice drawing a perfect circle, you start to, well, when you want to study your posture, does it make a difference, like, whether you sit up straight, you know, or do you try to draw the perfect circle like you, and then would you want to, you know, try extra hard to make it extra perfect? And you start to notice, like, when trying that hard makes it harder to draw a perfect circle, right?

[27:12]

Because you're so anxious. You're trying so hard. And then if you get too relaxed, is your circle going to be perfect? So you would want to, if you were studying this over a period of time, you would want to study, like, try harder, be more relaxed, have some fluidity, like, why don't you practice, let's today practice, you know, like water flowing through our bodies. Let's today practice like fire. Let's be earth today. Let's be, you know, air. Let's have our bodies be like space. There's all kinds of metaphors, you know, for how would you, what do you want to try out today when you do asana? When you try to draw this perfect circle, when you try to do this perfect pose. So perfection in that sense, you know, if you aim for perfection, this could be very useful because then you actually end up studying a lot of different things. What kind of energy, what kind of mind do you want to bring to what you're doing?

[28:17]

And, you know, weeks and weeks and months go by, and at some point you've studied many things by studying to draw the perfect circle, and at some point Picasso would say, do you see the way your circle is, a little squished, a little off here? That's you. And that's also, so actually by aiming for a kind of perfection, we end up with a kind of wholeness. Okay. Huh? We are perfect to start with. But the problem is that, the problem would be if you are perfect to start with. You know, there are people who are perfect to start with and that's just fine, but other people are perfect to start with and they use it as an excuse. Or, you know, they use it as an excuse to act out or to be lazy, and they say, but I'm perfect.

[29:23]

So all these things, you know, go around and around. And yes, we are perfect to start with. And then, or we could say, yes, today when you do asana, you're perfect, whether your asana is perfect or not. And the fact that you are doing the practice is manifesting your perfection. In Zen, this is called the oneness of practice and enlightenment. So you could say, in this case, that this is the oneness of asana and perfection. That the practicing of asana is perfection. That you're practicing extending your body and manifesting a pose. That's perfect. That you undertake that practice. That you're studying in that way. You're investigating in that way. You're realizing in that way. Because when we're not doing some particular practice like that,

[30:29]

often we're back in the usual way. We do something and we're not particularly open or studying or receptive or investigating or any of those things. So in a sense, at that time, that's not how perfect we are. It's when we're practicing in some way that we are reminded of the perfection. Thank you. You know, it's good to remember that. The point of practice is not in 4, 6 months or 3 years or 6 years. But the point of practice would be now. To realize the goal of practice now. This is when... I started with my story about going to the yoga classes and then asking teachers afterwards what's the important point. And somehow, in the class, that hadn't been mentioned. And there wasn't the sense of space in the actual practice.

[31:38]

It was do this and don't do that. And always some way that you could improve or perfect rather than realizing you're already perfect. There are simple ways to do this. I used to take classes years and years ago with Judith Lassiter. And she's pretty good about that kind of point. Because she'll say things like there's doing the pose and doing the work you need to do to do the pose. Now what about receiving the pose? And not just focusing on doing the pose. And always how you can do the pose better. But can you at some point receive the sensations and receive the work of the pose into your being? And she used to say also, for instance, you know, when there's pain in a pose, you need a certain amount of pain in a pose.

[32:45]

You should have the right amount. So why don't you study like what is the amount of pain that helps you to focus. It's not so much pain that you run away and hide. And it's not so little pain that your consciousness wanders off. But you need an amount of pain. What I have, you know, personally, the most, I have a problem with yoga class. Because a lot of yoga classes, there's just so many instructions coming. I cannot keep up with them. And then I feel like I'm a failure. I can't do this. I'd love to do what you're telling me, but I'm sorry I can't keep up. I can't find all those places you're mentioning.

[33:47]

You're mentioning them so fast. The heel of this and the inside of that and the outside of this. And do this with that and do that with this. And where are all these things? And I can't find them. And yow! And then I go into overwhelm. And I can't do this. And what's wrong with me? And boy, all these other people can. And I'm lost. And I'm stuck. And I wish sometimes, could we just have a few instructions and be able to actually receive the pose now? Thank you. And could I have my experience? And could you just not be telling me constantly what I ought to be experiencing next? You know, by doing this or by doing that. And could I just have a little instruction and then some space to just be in my body, in my being, in this pose, and sense and experience all of that? You know, there are a lot of different things as far as this goes, you see. And on the whole, yoga is very popular because you actually can do it.

[34:52]

And you have the illusion that there's good and bad and right and wrong. It's very disorienting, for instance, you know, like, I've done sensory awareness with Charlotte Silver and years ago with Charles Brooks. And in sensory awareness, you just sit here and, like, could you just sit here and, like, try turning your head to the right, okay? And look over to the right. And now turn your head back to the middle. And what did you notice? And then people right away are going to think, well, what was I supposed to notice? And there's no right or wrong answer. It's just like, well, could you just turn your head and notice what you notice? And it's real hard to do that. Could you just have your experience? And then people will say different things. Well, this was tight for me here, or I'm, you know, or my shoulder went up,

[35:57]

or, you know, as I turned, or, you know. So there's no right answer. There's just, like, what did you notice when you turned your head this way? And what about when you did this? And what came up for you? And what went on? And in Feldenkrais they do this. They make little tiny movements. And you can turn, and then, you know, there's turning your head to the right. And one thing is if you just turn your head to the right. So, you know, if you take your head and you go, oh, piano over there. And you turn your head back. And then there's turning your head really slowly. And the slower you move, the more awareness there is. So you start to turn your head, and it's like, it's not that easy. There's a little bump there. Your head moves a little bit, and then it sort of, like, stops. Why does it stop there? How much do you have to, you know, what do you have to do to get your head past that little bump?

[37:02]

What's going on at that little bump? So when you move very slowly like that, so if you, they do those things in the sensory awareness in Feldenkrais. In other schools, you study very subtle movements. And if you stop at the little bump, and then you go to, like, the level of feeling. What are you feeling at the little bump? What are you sensing? What's the thought that's there? And when you turn your head, and then, is that something that's over here? Or is it something that's over there that you're turning toward or turning away from? Where, you know, what is your reality as far as where things are? And what you turn, and how you do that. So you can study these things in a lot of ways.

[38:08]

As far as... And in certain of those schools, you see, in that kind of study, there's even less of the right or wrong than there is an asana. And that has the difficulty... The nice thing about... You can make this leap. You can actually leap away from where you're sitting. You can't be pushed. You can actually jump free. That's where you're sitting. Thank you. We're going to talk about student-teacher relationships. So I'd like to say just a few words about my interests.

[39:23]

So to speak. Or, which is to say, my background. Which kind of then is... Which would tell you something about where I'm coming from. So I find this... And I've been studying student-teacher relationships for 30 years or so. 35 years. So that doesn't mean I know anything. It just means I've been studying it. Which is part of what I have to talk to you about. Oh, good. We're closing the doors so that people don't wander in. We heard that the residents might wander in if we don't close the doors. Anyway, I started practicing Zen when I was 20. In 1965.

[40:29]

In 1966, I went to Tassajara, which then became the Zen Center. And I lived in Tassajara for 6 or 7 years. I started doing yoga in... I forget, about 1979. I don't do much yoga. My current practice is to do two sun salutations a day. And a few abdominal strengthening exercises. So that's not much yoga. Except for then when I kind of get corralled into yoga a bit. When Patricia and I do workshops together. Because that's how I met Patricia. I met Patricia in yoga class. She's on your core faculty. I see in your book here. But I don't think you get to see or do much with her until October or something. Anyway, Patricia and I do Zen and yoga workshops together.

[41:41]

So I've been... One of the first places where I started... I mean, I've been noticing how different people teach. In that sense, for a long time. So one of the things about yoga, which is really... And this is actually... Yoga's gotten so popular nowadays. Millions of people in America are doing yoga. Mostly, the tradition of what is being taught as yoga is... Stretching. Movement. Alignment. All these things. And what perhaps used to go with yoga as far as spiritual development... Is not necessarily part of the deal anymore. Because America, there's a lot of Christians and whatever. And people may not be interested in the spiritual development that goes along with yoga.

[42:51]

So there's been a bit of a tendency in America for yoga to be about fitness and health. And energy and vitality. And not so much about spiritual development or awakening or enlightenment or any of those other things. So, and part of this, you see, has to do with teacher-student relationship. You know, what is a teacher? What is a student? What is it that you're going to study together? Are you interested in stuff? Material? Matter? You know, and then where the stuff goes. Where to put the stuff that is your body. You know, put this here. Put this here. And then, you know, lengthen the distance between that point and this point. And is that it? So, for instance, then, in 1984, I went to a huge Iyengar yoga convention.

[44:01]

That year was in San Francisco at Fort Mason. Very convenient for me, because maybe it wasn't 84, because I think it must have been earlier. It must have been 81 or 82 or something, or 83. Because in 84 I was no longer in San Francisco. But I went to this big Iyengar yoga convention. And Mr. Iyengar did one of those demonstrations at Davies Hall. You know. Very good. Solo performance at Davies Hall. You know, hundreds of people came. But I went to all these classes. I had classes with Kofi Buzia and, you know, a bunch of different people. I can't even remember. I think I probably had a class with Victor Van Kooten and maybe Angela Palmer and so forth. You know. And then some people from India and different people. So. After class, I made it a point to go up to the teacher and say,

[45:04]

So, what is the most important point about yoga? I don't know if you ask yourself that. You know, if you're thinking about teaching yoga. Okay. So, what is the most important point? What is it that you really want to teach? Right? So, I would ask these people and then people would say things like, To be one with God. To have peace and harmony. To live in peace and harmony. Nobody mentioned any of those things in any of the classes. What they mentioned in the classes was, Put this there. Put that there. Lengthen that distance. Wake up. Stop. One teacher told me to stop yawning. Stop yawning. That's one of the things that happens in the yoga class. I start yawning and then my nose starts draining and my eyes start draining.

[46:08]

And I figure, like, this is cleansing. You know, this is how I wake up in yoga class. And my energy starts to move and my nose drains. And, okay, cool. But, no. In Iyengar yoga, you don't do that. And so, in Iyengar yoga. You know, as it was taught then. And, you know, pretty much as it's taught now. Because that's a school where there is a way to do it. The teacher knows. The student does it. It's your job as a teacher to get those students to perform according to what you tell them to perform. That's your job as a teacher. And you make sure you do that. And anybody who doesn't want to perform, you can push them to perform and to do what you tell them. And that's fair and that's okay and that's the way it's done and that's a good teacher.

[47:09]

Right? You've probably been to Iyengar yoga classes and, you know, I don't go anymore. And, you know, at the Iyengar yoga convention that I was at that year. I forget his name. But, anyway, he broke somebody's wrist putting their hands in the namaste behind their back. Yeah. No. One of the Indian teachers. I forget his name. Indian. Indian ancestry, anyway. He's not American. Akabala. Whatever. I can't remember, you know, quite. But, anyway, he broke somebody's wrist because that's what you do in Iyengar yoga. You, well, no, you force them into, you know, to go beyond. You know, like, you should go beyond. You need to, you know, stretch, extend, go beyond, you know, break through.

[48:14]

Get somewhere. Huh? Huh? Lawyers are not allowed to practice culturally. One of the reasons why people do that. I see. Lawyers. Not so many lawyers in India. All right. So, anyway, this is. So, I have a strong interest, anyway, in what is teaching. What are you, what do you want to teach? You see. And are you going to limit yourself to, you know, so what kind of teacher are you going to be? This is a lot to do with what kind of relationship you have with your students, right? What kind of relationship does the teacher have with you as a student? So, is it the teacher's job to get the students to perform according to some standard and expectation? Or what is the teacher's job? And if the teacher's job is to get performance, then you, you know, you can shout BKS, B kick screen. You know, it's the classic kind of, you know, and you can get performance that way.

[49:21]

And people actually can break through. You know, it's similar to, in Zen, there's the tradition of Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen. And the Soto Zen is the sleeping school, the Rinzai Zen is the performance school. So, in Soto Zen, you sit facing the wall. You turn your back on the world. You turn your back on Buddha. Your problems are going to come from behind, right? They sneak up on you, right? So, you let them. You have enough trust to turn your back on your enemy. And sit facing the wall. And then, you know, if you start to sleep, traditionally, our teachers used to come around and then they tap on the shoulder with their stick, which are sometimes little sticks and sometimes big sticks. And then they hit you. On your shoulders.

[50:23]

So, we used to just do once on the right and once on the left. That's, that's the quiet sleeping school. In the Rinzai school, they sit facing the middle of the room. So, it's much more electric. Everybody's got their eye on everybody else. Without having their eye on everybody else. Because you're not looking around, right? You're looking down, but you've got your eyes open, looking down. And then, if a thought crosses your face, they can come and wallop you. And they don't just hit you once on each shoulder. You bend all the way over, and then they hit you four times across each side of your back. And I've been told by people who have been there, one woman I know loves to go to this particular temple. They don't hit her. But she can see them hitting each other out of the corners of her eyes.

[51:27]

And she says when they hit, they give it everything they have. They end up on their tiptoes, you know, when they hit. And then it's all the energy they can muster, you know. So, you basically are killed over and over again. You die. And, you know, that's teaching, that's training. So, anyway, there's a whole range of what it is that's teaching and training, right? And when I was... When I first was at Tessonara, I was the cook. And as some of you may know, I wrote cookbooks for a while. Tessoura Bread Book, Tessoura Cooking, Tessoura Recipe Book. I helped Deborah Julie Green's cookbook. So, I had an interest in, well, what to teach people.

[52:32]

So, I started out, I was going to teach people to do what I told them. And I found out that after a while, it became very clear that this was not something that people wanted to learn. And they kept trying to tell me, and finally there was a kitchen rebellion. And it was kind of like a sit-down strike, where, you know, we're not going to work with them anymore. And the director of the monastery, you know, and we had a big meeting. And the director of the monastery said, after the meeting, so... Do you want to change the way you do this, or would you like another job?

[53:39]

This is when I started studying, you know, what is it that you're teaching. Because people tell me, you know, we have taste. We are actually people. We are actually people. We're not just your tool or another spatula in your hand. You know, there's a, actually there's a person over here. You know, they were trying to explain that to me. Because I thought they were just things to do what I told them. And why didn't they do what I told them better and more thoroughly? Because I knew, and they didn't. Or at least, that's what I believed. So... So I decided to change the way I taught.

[54:44]

And changing the way I taught at that point meant, you know, to acknowledge that other people have taste. Other people have senses. Other people are experiencing for themselves their life. And other people are trying to wake up. And actually, that if I wanted to, that it turned out that my job was not so much to get food cooked, but to train other people to be cooks. So how do you create cooks? And a cook, finally, is not somebody who just follows a recipe. Anybody can open up a cookbook and follow a recipe. A cook is somebody who can accept recipes. A cook is somebody who, you take in the information and you respond to it. And it's not according to, and there's no recipe for it.

[55:47]

There's no recipe that tells you which recipe to do today. So this is... So how do you do that? How do you train somebody to actually observe, to notice, to respond to things? And that's actually most of our life. Most of our life is not about how do I do what I should be doing now. What is it I should be doing now? How do I do this thing that I should be doing now? And how would I know what that is? Most of our life is outside of any recipe. Outside of any agenda or plan. Things are happening outside of any, you know, outside of our assumptions, beliefs, expectations. Life is happening. And we're, and then something happens next. And it was uncalled for. There's no way to, you know, know or predict or say what will happen next.

[56:56]

And Dogen said, so when you attain realization, you do not say, aha, realization, just as I expected. Your life will always be something that is not just what you expected. And then what will you do? Are you ready? All right. So this is a little bit about my background, my interest. This has been terrific. And, I mean, partly what's terrific for me is that I feel a kind of resonance here about what I'm interested in talking about and that you actually share a lot of my interests. So that's pretty nice. And one of the, you know, one of the basic kinds of models in Zen is that, you know, it's actually rather useful to take your questions

[58:13]

and live them and keep them and not actually get rid of them. So if you're wondering, like, I haven't figured out, for instance, like, how do I teach a skill set in spirituality or, you know, teach asana along with some, you know, true happiness, true self. You know, how do you do this? And like, well, I don't know. I mean, I don't have an answer. And it's actually more useful than to have the question and keep the question and keep studying and try something and see how it works. And then you try something else and you see what's going on. And you keep your questions and you live your questions and you study your questions and you don't actually end up with, you know, answers. So in a certain sense, you could also say this is to be willing to have problems or difficulties in your life. And that the point isn't... And this is related to something that I'm, you know, will talk more about.

[59:16]

But sometimes people, for instance, in the therapy world call this, you know, moving from perfection to wholeness. When you're perfect, you know, to be perfect, it would be you don't have problems. You don't have issues. You understand things. You know you're okay. You're cool. You can handle it. That's also has something to do with hierarchy, you know. But in terms of a spiritual life or, you know, the fullness of our life over time is we're becoming more whole rather than more perfect. Which actually means that you end up being willing to be a human being. As opposed to being, you know, a perfected, like, godlike person. And this is a big challenge because most of us...

[60:21]

I'm going to back up here anyway. But most of us have adopted, you know, good, bad, right, wrong as a model for our life. And we're aiming to be good and not bad and right and not wrong. Or we've taken the opposite approach and identified with I'll be bad. And I'm going to have fun at it. And what's wrong with them for accusing me of it, you know, and so forth. Anyway. So there was this Zen teacher, for instance, who said that real life in the mystery is nothing but breaking through to grab an ordinary person's life. This is a breakthrough to have an ordinary life. As opposed to a perfected life. You know, like, I know what I'm doing. I'm not an imposter. Now you, you know, you're starting to perfect. And when it comes up in, you know, it comes up in both meditation and in asana, you know, when would your asana be good enough?

[61:33]

Or do you still need to, does your asana need to improve and get better? And do you compare yourself to others? And do you check off how you're doing compared to others? And who has the best asana and who doesn't? And where am I? And how good does your asana have to get before you're, it's okay for you to be you. And would it help to have really great asana for you to be you? Would that make any difference finally? And how, you know, and you know, at some point it just doesn't matter, does it? No. No matter how good your asana gets. You're still you. And on one hand you can, so you can get involved in performance and see if you can have a good performance. And actually your good performance, you know, a lot of people feel like if I have a good performance, then I could have better self-esteem. But actually, of course, good performance means you're only as good as your last performance.

[62:39]

So you actually have greater stress. And anxiety. Will my next performance, you always have to outdo yourself. Will my next performance be as good as my last one or better? And can I do that? And so, and then, you know, classic aphorism, but the best performers are the loneliest people. Because it's like what you were saying, like, oh, he's so entertaining. People don't know me. They know the performance. And so then, whoever gets to know me, do I ever get to be actually seen and actually met as an ordinary person or am I just an entertainment? Am I just a funny person? Oh, that's terrific. Yeah, that's terrific and I'm just an ordinary person and I've got problems and issues and, you know, conflicts and all kinds of things going on.

[63:41]

And I don't need to tell you about them, particularly right now, but, you know, I'm an ordinary person. But, you know, if I identify with being a performer and if I get stuck in that, then nobody knows me. And people who are performers, it's just classic that nobody knows them. Well, we already know your office is keeping your office clean. Yeah, you know that. Could you repeat the first thing that I'm teaching you? Oh, Realizing the Mystery? That one? Yeah. It's nothing but breaking through to grab an ordinary person's life? That one? Yeah, that one. He's the same teacher who said, Shakyamuni Buddha is nothing but dry dung. Dung. Shakyamuni Buddha is nothing but dry dung.

[64:47]

It's similar to the Zen teacher in China who said, all of you gobblers of dregs, you come here looking for some teaching. All of you gobblers of dregs, you want, you know, you want something that somebody else, you know, is living their life and they leave behind these dregs. You know, their words and their, you know, teachings. And then you gobble these dregs of other people's lives. When will you have today? This is, this whole, this is about, you know, what do teachers do? And then you're supposed to give some teaching. And Suzukuro, she said, if I teach you anything, you'll stick to it. And you will abandon your own capacity to find your way in your life. And you will try to do what I tell you and you will stick to it and you will think that's right. And then you'll compliment yourself on what a good student you are. But you just abandon your capacity to find out for yourself because you're doing what I told you and you think that's right.

[65:50]

So this is very simple, very easy to do. Students love to do it, teachers love to do it. And let's, let's just stick to this model, you see. So, a lot of you, what a lot of you are bringing up is you don't have to stick to that model necessarily because there's, there's more truth in it. So I want to, before we have a break, I want to suggest to you my basic concept. Basic kind of concept which we'll keep using here about two models of teaching. These are also known as two models of therapy and, and so forth. And if you're careful, if we're careful, we will understand that both of these are useful. And it will be a matter of how do we balance them or utilize both of them as appropriate. But it's not that one is right and the other is wrong or one is better and the other is worse, right?

[66:54]

All right, so one model is what is sometimes known as the masculine. Masculine, the masculine mode is insight. The masculine mode is our culture, which is predominantly when you go to school, there is considered to be a body of knowledge that you don't have as a student, that the teacher has. It's a body of knowledge or a skill set or a repertoire of techniques. And you are going to learn that, so you are going to take in this information that you don't have and you are going to master it so that now you have it. There's a certain maleness about this because you see that knowledge is going to be inserted into you. You will take in that knowledge.

[68:00]

And as the teacher, you should have that knowledge to give to people. You see, you feel like I should have that knowledge. If I had that knowledge, I could give it to them. If they don't have knowledge, I have it and then I can tell them. Now they will know and I'm a successful teacher if they get that. This is. So that's the first mode. The information is outside of you. You take in the information. It's what annoyed me about going to school, you know, college, because I wanted to know about how to live. And all they were teaching was knowledge, skills, information. Here's some information for you. Could you tell us the information now? Put it on the test. And I want to know how to live my life. And they said, sorry, that's not what we're here for. You know, at least when I went to college. And so then I found a practice I could do called meditation, which then became a way that I could live and I could actually grow and develop as a person.

[69:15]

It wasn't just that I got a set of skills which are useful to have in their own way. You know, when you go to see the doctor, you want the doctor to have the skills to take care of you. And it would be sort of nice if they recognized you as a person. But, you know, when you go to the emergency room, you want them to remove the bullet to mend the bones. And they don't need to see you as whole. They need to see you as stuff, you know, that needs to be sewed up. As tissue and as blood and as bone. You know, that you want them to see you that way so that they can handle those things and put those things back together again. You know, that's where Western medicine works really great is in terms of stuff, in terms of the plumbing. We'll, you know, we'll replumb you, we'll fix you up, you know. And Western medicine is really good at that kind of stuff.

[70:19]

I wouldn't go to, you know, some kind of Native American healer if I was in an automobile accident. I'll want the emergency room, thank you. All right, so this is sort of model number one. Then model number two, which a number of you have been, you know, referring to in various ways, is the more feminine model. So-called feminine mode, which is hold the container. And this is also the model in a spiritual sense of the teacher is like a true friend, a good friend or a true companion. The teacher is right there with you, recognizes you. And you feel in the presence of this person, you feel it's okay for me to be me at last.

[71:22]

And I don't have to perform, I don't have to measure up, I don't have to be perfect. I could be me and it would be okay for me to be me. Wow, this is cosmic. So this is so-called, you know, feminine principle, that holding a container where it's safe for you to be you. Where it's safe for everybody to be who they are. Including the teacher. And the teacher is not then putting themselves in an exalted position either because then, you know, how real would that be? And it's not very safe to be exalted. It's precarious to be exalted.

[72:25]

And you need to have a lot of perks, you know, to maintain your exalted state. Or you could easily lose your exalted state. Now, again, I want to emphasize that in these two models, you know, that one without the other is really problematic. You know. If you emphasize the first model, you know, I have information, you don't. Now, how smart are you? You have to, as a student in that model, you practice not having the answers, not knowing anything, and turning to the teacher. Please, tell us. Tell me. Give me the answer. Give me the information. Give me the knowledge. I couldn't say. I can't figure out anything for myself. This came up, for instance, I did a column for the Yoga Trainer about eating wisely.

[73:30]

Now, what would be actual wisdom? The usual idea of eating wisely is there's a body of knowledge out there about what wise eating is, and if you just did what you were told, that would be eating wisely. Plenty of fiber, you know. It's vegetarian, it's no meat, it's not dairy, it's this, it's not that, you know. You need to just do this and skip the chocolate, don't have the ice cream, and, you know, you better not have those chips, and, you know, it's sinful. That's sinful to have that chocolate cake, you know. So, if you just did what you were told, according to the people who know, that would, that's what they call eating wisely. Now, how wise is that to give up your capacity to experience your life, trying to, and try to get your life to fit into the model of what somebody else says is the right kind of way to do it?

[74:34]

How wise would that be? Like, I don't know anything, I can't figure out anything, I can't notice anything, I can't experience anything, I can't taste anything, I don't know how anything I eat affects me, I don't care, I'm not interested, I can't follow the plan anyway, and etc. And then you, you, and basically, you know, our culture is about teaching you to be mediocre. You know, school is basically about teaching you to be mediocre, and to fit in, and not sabotage the system, and be moderately productive, and congratulations, we'll give you a job. You've been to school for 16, 18 years, it's been a lot of fun, hasn't it? And now you're ready for the real world. Only you're not ready for the real world, you're just ready to follow the program, you know. And you're ready for us to course you along, and, you know, with moderate this's and that's, and, you know, so you'll fit in just fine, thank you. So, in that kind of model of, there's information outside, and then basically the education system means that most people are failures.

[75:42]

You drop out after the 8th grade, or the 12th grade, or the 16th grade, or the 22nd grade, and there's a few people who have made it to the pinnacle of the education system, and they're still failures. You know, or, but anyway, you know, but you're a success within a certain arena of education, but most people are dropping out of education and, you know, getting real. So, and you know, our educational system in that way emphasizes this masculine mode. I was just reading a few months ago, Kitchen Table Wisdom. Wonderful book. Many stories. Naomi Raymond, Newman Raymond, Raymond Newman, anyway, she became a doctor. She went to medical school. She spent years becoming an expert, and now she works with doctors, and she works with people on how to, you know, get over it.

[76:44]

Or that there's more to life than being an expert. And how much, you know, as a doctor, you want to have the answer. You want to be able to say, this is what's going on, and you want to be able to do something about it. You want to be able to fix it. And so that's the medical model. And then, you know, as a doctor, what happens when, what happens when, you know, children die of cancer? You fail. You didn't know. And then can you, can you ever, how do you actually learn to be with that? That's a whole different thing to be vulnerable, to fail, you know, to not know. And how can you accept the, you know, the tragedies and the traumas and the setbacks and failures of life, you know, which are inevitable, which no matter how much knowledge and expertise we have, you know, finally that's not the answer to life.

[77:48]

So the first model you can get very caught up in being right, being good, having the answers, being a success, you know, having the skills. And you can end up not being particularly feeling sensitive, vulnerable, open, receptive, because you're concentrated on, you know, all of this. And doctors are trained to do that. And there's nothing wrong with that, except that when you do it to the exclusion of this whole other area of life, you can end up with doctors who have no bedside manner, you know, no capacity to actually just be with somebody. Famous story was the story of the Tibetan physician and the doctor, I forget who it was, who watched the Tibetan doctor who had, you know, been one of the Dalai Lama's doctors going on rounds at this hospital. And he diagnosed a woman and he came up with the diagnosis of this woman without, you know, any of the medical information.

[78:58]

He just, he checked her urine and he held her pulse for about half an hour. And the doctor who was watching this and describing it said, I want it to be held like that. I want it to be received so carefully, so thoroughly. I want it to be that met, that known, that received. I was jealous, he said. And all the doctor was doing was, you know, holding her when you just felt like so. And then he diagnosed she has congenital heart failure, but he didn't call it congenital heart failure. Years ago, you know, long before she was born, you know, you know, energy broke through a wall that shouldn't be broken through. He was talking about congestive heart failure. And she had congenital congestive heart failure.

[79:58]

But that's the other model, is more the model of then receiving or being with and not setting up standards. Now, if you just do this and you don't have the other, what happens, you see? Then you just have teacher and student, you know, you have a situation where you just sort of merge and blend and get lost together. And you can't find your way. And nobody particularly learns anything necessarily or studies anything or, you know, and in a certain way it's very companionable. But on the other hand, it's kind of directionless and lost. Is that making sense? So what we're looking at as students here and teachers is how do we, and many of you raised this question, you see,

[81:02]

how do we combine these two? You know, how do we have, how is it that we can convey skills and techniques and information and share that and also honor our capacity to find our way in life? And also honor, like, that each of us is who we are. You know, how do you, how is it finally that we can actually meet and break through to grab one's ordinary life, have an ordinary person's life? And that's in a certain sense, you know, from the Zen point of view, in a colloquial sense, spirituality. It doesn't seem very spiritual, you know, because spiritual we usually think of as high up there. Anyway, we can talk more about spiritual, etc. In Zen, this is sort of true spiritual, you know, that you could, that finally it's okay for you to be a human being.

[82:06]

So you could say here that the teacher, in this sense, is somebody who, you know, introduces you to you and gives you permission to be you and gives you permission to be the teacher and helps you realize that and helps you not be stuck in any particular position or place. And finally, you see, there's no, there's no body of knowledge for how to do this. Basically, we learn to do these things. We're learning to live our life by living our life. And, you know, study as we go along and see what we notice and observe and find out. And so, at some point, you could just say that, you know, finally what you're teaching is you.

[83:07]

Who have you become? Who are you? And it's unavoidable, you know, what you end up teaching is your presence. How you present yourself, who you are. And to the extent that you are investigating, in a certain sense, as a student, various of these questions that we brought up or issues or how do we put these things together. And the fact that you're doing that means that's the kind of person you are. If you're the kind of person who's going to just present information and you want to limit it to that, then that's what you'll teach. So you will end up, as a teacher, revealing yourself and offering yourself. And, you know, people get that, whether it's explicit or not, whether it's said or not. And many of you have said that. When you're in class, you experience people in various ways.

[84:10]

And it's not necessarily anything in particular that they verbally say or not. It's their presence, it's their being. And then we resonate with one another in various ways, depending on who we're with, what's going on. So, I'm really interested in, you really missed something there. Sorry about that. Isn't that life the way it always is? We've been having our own private discussion back there. Yeah, I wouldn't have liked it. Yeah, I know. Cassandra was asking me, you know, what about sex and all this. And I just thought we'd save that for later. Let's not, you know, worry about all that today. But partly she was wanting to know, she said, I'm going to miss Tuesday and the next Tuesday. Now when do we get to the sex part? So, I did hear, but, you know, before we drop that completely. Yeah, sex was stupid.

[85:11]

You guys, did they have sex while you guys were there? It was all just in the mind. It didn't have to do with body parts. Not the end of it. I did hear William Sloan Coffin, who was, I think the, what do you call it, Dean of the Yale Divinity School of Religion. He was, at one point, you know, at Zen Center and he said, you know, haven't you, didn't they teach you Buddhists in seminary school? The problem is that a lot of Buddhists and yoga teachers never went to seminary school, you know. But, you know, he said, in seminary school, the first thing they teach you is don't fuck the flock. But anyway. We'll attribute that one to you.

[86:20]

But anyway. Alright, so anyway, I thought we'd save that because we have other things to talk about first to set the stage, the context, you know, for all of those, you know, what we're talking about or what we're thinking about because otherwise we just get into headiness. So, before I go on now, any comments about what I've been talking about so far or can I just go on? Go on. Go on or else we'll comment. Uh-oh. No more comments. Alright, no more comments. I do actually have one question. Yes, please. When you're talking about one without the other, talking about the masculine and the feminine, you know, one without the other is problematic. And so, are you suggesting that if you tend, you know, if you're like 90 masculine and 10 feminine that you try to develop your feminine qualities? I mean, I'm not really sure about that. Yes. I mean, if I'm just being me, I'm probably going to be like 90 feminine and 10 masculine.

[87:29]

Uh-huh. So, how do you... Well, you know, partly, you know, we are going to end up being who we are and at the same time, we can develop various capacities and in various ways.

[87:43]

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