I vow to chase the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good morning. Good morning. We're in the midst of our spring practice period here at Berkeley Zen Center. And during that practice period, we have a shuso, a head student. And the head student for this practice period is Bob Rosenbaum. And Bob, I neglected to write down your drawing. Make your own shot. Clear mirror, calm sitting. Thank you, Ellen.

[01:13]

I'd like to start with an apology beforehand, especially to people who might be here for the first time. Usually, the talks that are given here are probably more straightforward and more understandable than today's will be. And I'm not going to explain all that much because of the nature of the topic. So please don't let me confuse you. Dogen said, for the time being, let's say there are two approaches to studying the Buddha way. To study with mind and to study with body. Two weeks ago, when I talked about the case of Tozan, which is the koan that Sojin's given me for this practice period, I kind of focused on body.

[02:23]

And today I'm going to focus more on mind. Dogen says, sometimes you study the way by casting off the mind, and sometimes you study the way by taking up the mind. Either way, study with thinking and study the way non-thinking. To directly enter the mountains is to think, not thinking. Alan mentioned, I love mountains. This is with a special apology to Sojin, since yesterday somebody asked him about doing Zazen and whether he gives instructions to the body or to the mind. And he basically said he pays attention to the body and lets the mind take care of itself. Well, what do we mean by this mind?

[03:30]

Just as you are not who you think you are, so your mind is not what it thinks it is. In the Sandokai we read, the mind of the great sage of India was intimately communicated from west to east. And in Tozan's Song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, he says, the teaching of thusness has been intimately communicated by Buddhists and ancestors. It's all about intimacy. It's what the practice is. what's mine. When I was a young man I was driving with my girlfriend of the time one day up in Bellingham, Washington towards Vancouver and it was one of those days with mixed clouds and blue sky and we there's a lot of mountains there but the way opened up and suddenly

[04:39]

there was this spectacular double rainbow, absolutely perfect, every single color in each arch, completely thick and clear and shining, stretching all the way from the western horizon to this field 50 yards away from where we were, where you could see the end of the rainbow. Well, what could one do? We started digging. right we pulled the car aside we stopped we got out and we walked into the field and the closer we got to the end of the rainbow the further it receded so there it was the teaching of the the preaching of the non-sentient starts off with Tozan asking about how can the non-sentient preach the Dharma, and there's a poem which goes, wonderful, wonderful, the preaching of the Dharma by the non-sentient is inconceivable if you try to hear it with your ears, hard to understand, but when you listen with your mind's eye, then you know it.

[06:04]

So are you listening with your mind's eye? right now. Just to review the story a little bit, the Denko Roku goes from that to Tozan as a child reading the Heart Sutra which says, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. Then he touches his nose and his ears and he goes, but I've got a body, what do I do? And that motivated his practice. And I think it motivates a lot of our practice and a lot of us come here because we go, well, I seem to have this mind. What do I do? And in Tozan's case, he went around and he saw some teachers at a certain point asking his teacher what the basis of his teaching was. And the teacher said just this. Tozan still had some doubts but he crossed, he was crossing a stream over a bridge and he saw his reflection and he composed the poem.

[07:11]

I'll read one translation here. Avoid seeking him in someone else or you will be far apart from the self. Solitary now am I and I go on alone but I meet him everywhere. He is now surely me, but I am not him. Understanding it in this way, you will directly be one with thusness. I am not it. That or it is actually me. We talked about that a little bit two weeks ago, but the case doesn't stop there. It goes on. And it goes on from the non-Sentient preaching the Dharma to say that Huizhong said, right now, and his right now was not back then, it's right now, within everyone, which includes you, when ideas about the two classes of ordinary and holy do not arise or cease in the least way, there is a subtle consciousness

[08:28]

that is unrelated to being and non-being, keenly aware, but without attachments. But the Sixth Patriarch said, the six senses discriminating their external objects is not subtle consciousness. So we all know the five senses, the sixth sense is mind, or one form of mind consciousness. While all the senses are forms of consciousness, And the Surangama scripture says, just to give you a flavor, when I don't see, why don't you see my not seeing? If you see my not seeing, that's naturally not the characteristic of not seeing. If you don't see my not seeing, it's naturally not a thing. How could it not be you? not a thing.

[09:34]

Very hard to be intimate with things if you turn yourself into a thing. What is this consciousness? What is this knowing? The Tozan case goes on and goes, there is a knowing apart from passionate thought and discrimination. And we're reading the Xin Xin Ming that touches on this. That is, it is the subtle consciousness which is at all times preaching keenly. It makes one raise one's eyebrows and blink, makes one walk, stand, sit and lie down, be confused, get into trouble, die here, be born there, eat when hungry, sleep when tired. All these, without exception, are preaching. speech, work, movement, cessation of movement, are also preaching. And it's not just verbal, and it's not just non-verbal preaching, it is that one who appears magnificently, is very bright and never dark, and since it is revealed in everything, including the croaking of bullfrogs and the sounds of earthworms, it preaches keenly without sensation.

[10:52]

You know, each of you is always preaching. And one of the things which falls to me as Shuso is I have the privilege to see your illumination and your preaching and sometimes it pains me that you don't see it yourself. And if you deny that part of yourself you're putting yourself below the croaking of bullfrogs and below the sounds of earthworms. And, you know, you may not think much of yourself, but can you at least put yourself up to the level of sounds of earthworms? I hope so. I hope so. While it's not the way we usually think of mind and consciousness, is it? And the whole subject of mind is a Tough one in Buddhism. If you look at the Mumonkan collection of koans, in case 30, a monk asks Matsu, what's Buddha?

[12:01]

And Matsu says, this very mind is Buddha. And then in case 33, another monk asks Matsu, what's Buddha? And Matsu goes, this mind is not Buddha. sometimes translated as not mind, not Buddha. And then in case 34, Nanchuan says, mind is not Buddha, wisdom is not the path, or learning is not the path. Most of us kind of like learning. You know, we come to the Zen Center, we figure we're going to learn something. Good luck. There's another version of Nangquan. Nangquan said to the assembly, Khyangsi Matsu said, Matsu, this very mind itself is Buddha. But I, Nangquan, don't talk like this. It's not mind, not a thing, not Buddha.

[13:04]

So now tell me, is saying this a mistake or not? At which point, Zazu, who I think is Joshu, made prostrations and left. That was his response. So all of you can leave now. Just bow and leave. Just drop me and drop yourself and drop the distinction between self and other. Listen to the mind, listen to the lecture with your mind's eye Or maybe with a touch of no mind. But if you're listening for information, like in a class, you're lost. Another version of this, Dogen's wonderful poem, Mind itself is Buddha.

[14:09]

Practice is difficult. Explanations, not difficult. Not mind. Not Buddha. Oh, explanation's difficult. Practice. Not difficult. Mind is Buddha, mind is not Buddha. This is thinking not thinking. And I heard a person giving zazen instruction today talking about the mudra and how to hold your mudra. So one way of doing it is take one hand, za, mind, take another hand, Zen, call it no mind, but put them together. And when you hold your mudra like this, is this mind or no mind? Are you holding faith? Or is faith holding you? Every motion, every time you do this, you're expressing this koan.

[15:15]

Well, let's try and explain a little bit here. Dogen, in his lecture in the Ehe Koroku, this very mind cutting notches in the boat, Quotes Maslow saying this very mind this very Buddha and he says, you know, there's very few who understand this Although he said this very mind This is not the first five consciousnesses and it's not the sixth consciousness or the eighth or the ninth It's also not the seventh which is self-centered consciousness It's not the various elements of the mind Also, it's not citta, the mind of grasses and trees, or the mind as the heart essence. Excluding all of these, what mind is there that we can call this very mind? It is not thinking, knowing, memory, or sensation. It is not views or understanding.

[16:18]

It is not spiritual knowledge. It is not clarified knowledge. Now I'm a neuropsychologist and part of my job is to every day test people's minds, how well they can pay attention, concentrate, remember things. But that's not the mind that's in question here. In traditional Buddhism there's nine consciousnesses, Sometimes there's 52 versions of that as a neuropsychologist. There's many more that we could identify but These different kinds of consciousnesses and just to give you a Western slant on this for a moment think of how you pay attention. We all say Oh attention We know we all know what attention means, right? I It's a big problem in neuropsychology. What is attention?

[17:19]

How do you measure it? At the very least, you can think of attention as a kind of beam and it can be a wide beam or a narrow beam, right? It can also be a stationary beam or it can be moving around. So immediately, just talking about attention, you've got four kinds, you know. wide, moving, wide, stationary, etc. What's your attention like in zazen? Do you struggle to have, quote, right attention? What's right attention? What's right consciousness? In Dogen's lecture, The 80,000 Foot Cliff, it's a good title, He says, round and bright, with clear insight, consciousness is tranquil. Mahakasyapa could differentiate, and for all Zen worthies, differentiation is a matter of discriminating mind.

[18:23]

For a long time, Mahakasyapa extinguished the root of discriminating mind, round and bright. Clear insight does not rely on consciousness, fortunately. He notes, I like this line, if the great ocean thought it was full enough, the hundred rivers would flow backwards. Part of our problem is, on some level, we all think we're full enough. Or we wish we were full enough, full enough, full enough, really. Or we have this illusion that we can be full enough. So it's not discriminating mind. Dogen goes on back in body and mind study of the way to say, remember we were talking or I was talking two weeks ago about the preaching of the non-sentient.

[19:31]

Well, how about earth? Dogen says, it's not that there is no earth, but invariably there is a world where emptiness is earth. But all this is merely a moment or two of mind. A moment or two of mind is a moment of mountains, rivers, and earth. Or two moments of mountains, rivers, and earth. And because mountains, rivers, earth, and so forth neither exist nor do not exist, they're not large or small, not attainable nor unattainable. Just wholeheartedly accept. It's a key phrase. Just wholeheartedly accept. and trust, been talking about faith, that to study the way with mind is this mountains, rivers, and earth. Mountains, rivers, and earth mind itself, thoroughly engaged in studying the way. And because the study of the way is like this, walls, tiles, and pebbles are mind.

[20:35]

Or as Tozan puts it, I am not it, it actually is me. That is your mind. Looking back at you. Mountains, rivers, earth, the sun, the moon, the stars are mind at just this moment. What is it that appears directly in front of you? It's mind. Big mind. But, you know, if we're touching on the teaching of the non-sentient here, Don't be so sure that you know what's sentient and not sentient. Mind, I would say, is not sentient. Mind is the non-sentient listening to the preaching of the non-sentient. And as the non-sentient listens to the preaching of the non-sentient, that's where sentience arises.

[21:41]

It's where you bubble up. Well, there's huge amounts written on consciousness and mind, and there's one point where Dogen spends several pages in the Eihei Kōroku, an unusual amount of time reviewing the various theories of consciousness, and he concludes by saying the mind is able to make everything its object, but these varieties of mind are not the teaching of Buddhas and ancestors. The whole quality of small mind, of discriminating mind, is that it takes things as their objects. There's a long tradition in Western philosophy of describing mind in this way, and the phenomenologists and existentialists talked about what they called intentionality, that consciousness is always consciousness of some thing.

[22:47]

And if you look at mind as an information processor, Gregory Bateson, who's a real teacher of mine, and who wrote a good deal about how you can have minds without brains, you know, you can look at the Bay Area and see the geography as a mind. And, you know, the Bay Bridge is one vast neuron. transmitting information in the form of bits of cars and people from one place to another. Mind is a aggregate of interacting parts in which the whole process starts off by seeing the effects of difference. That's what triggers mind. And in fact, neurologically, The way the nervous system is set up is to notice difference. If there's a sound in the background and it stays there for a while, your nervous system habituates to it.

[23:55]

You stop listening to it. You stop hearing it, actually. So our mind is biologically set up to focus on difference. But that's discriminating mind as opposed to big mind. And part of the problem I sometimes have with mindfulness practice in the Vipassana tradition, which I have learned a lot from and respect and enjoy practicing. But there's a lot of observing. That's the vast bulk of its practice. And observing is good, but that's incomplete you know you can watch yourself watching and watch yourself watching yourself watching and at a certain point you'll get confused and when we read the shin shin ming it says to seek mind with the discriminating mind is the greatest of all mistakes

[25:03]

Of course, we do it all the time while we're doing Zazen. But it's really interesting to do Zazen and drop discriminating mind. So Tozan, well, getting back to the story of Tozan, in Suzuki Roshi's Not Always So, he's got a chapter called Wherever I Go, I Meet Myself, and he discusses the Tozan story. And his description of the root of the Tozan story is to say that Tozan says, don't try to see yourself objectively. Don't try to seek for information about yourself that's the objective truth. That's information. The real you is quite different from any information you have. The real you is not that kind of thing. I go my own way wherever I go, I meet myself. Tozan rejects your effort to cling to information about yourself and says, go on alone using your own legs.

[26:10]

There's a big difference between wanting to understand yourself and to be yourself. It's probably harder to be yourself. As a therapist, I sometimes see people who can spend years and years trying to understand themselves. And as Suzuki Roshi says, you try to understand who you are. It's an endless task. To reach a conclusion is almost impossible. And if you continue trying, you become crazy and you won't know what to do with yourself. And so he translates Tozan's poem, which I read at the beginning, his enlightenment poem, in a different way. He translates it as, Do not try to see the objective world. You, which is given as an object to see, is quite different from you, yourself. I'm going my own way, and I meet myself, which includes everything I meet.

[27:14]

I am not something which I can see as an object. When you understand self, which includes everything, you have your true way. Whoa. Yeah, that's right. Whoa! It's a good way of doing Zaza. Whoa! [...] you know, understanding. We do try and understand ourselves, but Sojin showed me this part of the Shobo Genzo where Dogen quotes Gensha. A monk asks Gensha and says, I hear you've said all the universe is one bright pearl.

[28:18]

How can I gain an understanding of that? And Gensha says, all the universe is one bright pearl. What need is there to understand it? All the universe is one bright pearl, says Dogen in his commentary. Your whole body is one bright pearl, one right dharma eye. The real body, one expression. Your whole body is a radiant light. Your whole body is mind in its totality. When it is your whole body, your whole body knows no hindrance. Everywhere is round, round. turning over and over. Did you ever sit sazen and feel yourself turning over and over? While being essentially, this is going on in the same fascicle, being essentially obscured from first to last, the pearl is the original face and the enlightened eye, yet

[29:27]

Both you and I, not knowing what the pearl is and what it is not, have had a great many thoughts and non-thoughts about it, which have come to form positive notions, sometimes called opinions. Yet, when thanks to Gensha's words, it's made known and clarified that even our bodies and minds are from the beginning the pearl, then the mind is not I. We tend to identify with our minds. I like Woody Allen's statement about this. He says, you know, my mind, my brain, you know, it's my second most favorite organ. Couldn't resist. Dogen says, even if there is perplexed or troubled thinking, it's not apart from the brightest pearl. It's not a deed or thought produced by something that is not the bright pearl. It doesn't matter what each thought is.

[30:30]

They're not separate. Small mind's not separate from big mind. And this is where we get into problems. In some schools, one of the first koans that you do is the koan where Daikon Ino goes to Bodhidharma Daikon Enno, the next one, right? And he says, oh master, my mind's not pacified. Please, please pacify my mind. And Bodhidharma says, okay, bring me that mind. I'll pacify it for you. And Daikon Enno says, oh, but I've searched for my mind and I can't take hold of it and grasp it. And Bodhidharma says, now, I've already completely pacified it. graspable. Thaiso Eka. Thank you. Thaiso Eka.

[31:37]

In the Shin Shin Ming we've been reading, one thing, all things, move among and intermingle without distinction. All this stuff that comes up. To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection. I see so many people worried about not being perfect. Some years ago I was going to Dokusan and I passed the plum tree and a plum was on the branch and it was still a little green and I went in, I spoke with Mel and I said, see this plum and it's a very nice plum and it's not quite ready and that's what I'm feeling like. I'm feeling like this plum and I'm sitting on the branch and I'm not quite ripe. And Mel looked at me and he said, well the difference between you and the plum is the plum doesn't worry about it. So

[32:42]

Its face seems to keep on changing, turning and stopping, but it's the same bright pearl. And when it is thus, there's no reason to doubtingly think that you are not the pearl. Just because you think, I'm not the pearl. Perplexed thoughts, doubts, accepting, rejecting, they're just passing small-scale notions. This is just the pearl appearing as a small-scale notion. Dogen says, arousing the mind in a mid-shifting sense, he says, the Bodhisattva arouses the mind of awakening within karmic consciousness, within this small mind, awakening mind arises. And he says, because that's so, how could we hate or love the autumn moon or the spring wind? Dogen quotes Venerable Asvaghosa asking Venerable Punyayasa, and he says, I want to understand what's Buddha, which is really the same as asking who am I?

[33:52]

And Punyayasa said, if you want to understand Buddha, it is that which does not understand. Or Amban says, stop, don't speak. The ultimate truth is not even to think. But here's our dilemma. Not thinking, thinking, not thinking, all very good. But, if you state, if you say you don't understand, says Duggan, even the five precepts are not maintained. If you state your understanding, you're making mistake after mistake. I would say, if you rest in not understanding, you dishonor the universe. But if you probe for understanding, you violate the universe. Not knowing is most intimate, but it is incomplete. And because we live in a state of not knowing, we want to know others, and we want to be known.

[34:56]

I visited Australia last September, and most of you have seen pictures of the red rock in the center, Uluru. And there's this amazing thing when you go there, Someone described it as you go there, and you've seen it on postcards, and you don't expect much, and you go there, and there's this feeling that this rock knows you. Very interesting feeling. A monk asked Shih Tzu, what's the meaning of the ancestral teacher coming from the West? And Shih Tzu said, ask the temple pillars. And the monk said, I don't understand. And Shih Tzu said, I understand even less than you. So here's the temple pillars. Their base is in body. Their summit's in mind. What's all that in between? The knot holes, neither mind nor not mind.

[36:02]

The cracks and crevices are where mind and no mind meet, where faith and doubt meet. And the pillars uphold the temple, but the temple realizes the pillars. So Shih Tzu says, ask the temple pillars. I've been very fortunate in being Xu Tzu in that I get a chance to do that in all the qi's. In all the qi's, I'm asking the temple pillars, what's Buddha? Because each of you is a temple pillar. Each of you practicing here right now is a pillar upholding the temple and being realized by the temple. Because, as Suzuki Roshi says in his commentary on Tozan, to meet yourself is to practice with people.

[37:07]

I really like that. And he says, when you see someone practicing sincerely, you see yourself. And you get impressed by someone's practice, and you may say, oh, she's doing very well. That she is not she nor you, but something more than that. What is she? When you are struck by something, that is actually the real you. Tentatively, I say you, but it's the pure experience of our practice. everything you encounter, every moment of your experience. Practice is accepting everything as you go, which means everything is you, and that includes things people say about you. Suzuki Roshi says, if people say you're crazy, you should go, okay, I'm crazy. If people say you're a bad student, it might be so. I'm a bad student, but I'm trying pretty hard, That's enough.

[38:09]

When you sit in that way, you accept yourself and accept everything together with yourself. I am not it. It actually is me. Everything you encounter is you. There's a poem by Tennyson, of all people. I am a part of all that I have met. Yet all experience is an arch where through gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades forever and forever when I move." The rainbow. And Suzuki Hiroshi goes on to say, Don't be enslaved by the thinking mind or the imagination or emotional activity. He's talking about this auto-consciousness here. Just think in its true self, true sense. The thinking which comes to us from our true self which includes everything.

[39:12]

Before we think about it, trees, birds, everything are thinking. And when they think, they groan, they sing. That's their thinking. There's no need for us to think more than that. So in our practice, we don't cling to any particular standard for thinking because there's no true way and no false way. So, you know, we talk a lot about acceptance. Acceptance doesn't mean going, oh, that's okay. That's discriminating. That still objectifies it. Acceptance is an openness beyond separation. Seeing that as you. Just give up everything and practice Zazen with an open mind, and then whatever you see, you meet yourself. That's you beyond she or he or me," says Suzuki Roshi. You can have this kind of experience wherever you are. As Tozan said, wherever I go, I meet myself. If he sees water, that's to see himself.

[40:15]

To see water's enough for him, even though he cannot see himself in water. Dogen says, The reality of Zen practice, dropping off body and mind, is just mind cannot objectify it, thinking cannot describe it. I think that's a good description of love. Love is engaging without objectifying. And because you engage with someone or something not as an object, not as something understandable, all love rests on faith. During one of the teas, somebody asked me, well, I see a lot of suffering and how about love? Is love permanent? And I said to her, well, I kind of hate to say it, but no, love's not permanent.

[41:18]

There's nothing which is permanent. But I apologize because I didn't say enough. It's impermanent in the sense of it's timeless. Things which are impermanent are timeless. Dogen said the self is time. If love is timeless, it's also selfless. Timeless transcending birth and death. Do you know this poem by E.E. Cummings? Love did no more begin than love will end. Where nothing is to breathe, to stroll, to swim, love is the air, the ocean, and the land. Love is the voice under all silences, the hope which has no opposite in fear, the strength so strong, mere force's feebleness, the truth more first than sun, more last than star. Do lovers love? Why, then, to heaven with hell.

[42:19]

Whatever sages say, and fools, all's well. But of course, love, when it takes the relative form of our personal stuff, there can be problems. And that's why Dogen says there's a simple way to become a Buddha, just refrain from unwholesome actions. When you're compassionate towards all sentient beings, respectful to seniors and kind to juniors, not excluding or desiring anything with no designing thoughts or worries, you'll be called a Buddha. Do not seek anything else. So in summary, you don't have to understand. In fact, it's exactly where you don't understand that you rest on and in faith. sometimes called the peace that passes all understanding.

[43:22]

I want to finish with a poem that I wrote some years ago, which I hope captures some of this. I wrote, how wonderful that there are things one cannot grasp despite a self that striving to let go grasps the firmer. Folding the laundry carefully, making such straight lines I double back upon myself, a wave watching waves create a beach of footsteps, salt, and stars. Breakers never reach the shore, sloughing their crests in sprays of light with the world moving, with the waves standing still, an old rock welcomes lichens, mosses, moons, Each strand of seaweed can only be itself, one word in conversations between tides and land, where wind becomes the ocean, disappearing into sand.

[44:30]

Perhaps you have some questions? Ross? I have a friend who wrote a book called How Clients Make Therapy Work, which I think should be required reading for all psychologists. Maybe we can write a book together called How Zen Students Make Zen Practice Work.

[45:41]

Where else are you going to look? The main thing that I try to teach my students and work within my clients is trusting them and before every meeting with a client I ask myself how can I enjoy this meeting because I really believe it's nice to be enjoyed by another person and that person sitting there in the midst of their suffering and if just you can see that and respond to it and I don't talk about this in this kind of language you know with these folks but it's sometimes as simple as saying to a person who's lost all hope and you find out oh he's a weightlifter and you go oh I don't You do it, you can do it, and then you get tired and you feel like you can't do it anymore.

[46:49]

And then you do it one or two more times, and that's how you build your strength. Is that right? And the person goes, oh, yeah. I say, oh, OK, well, you're having a hard time right now, but you're still lifting weights. So I tell you, the next time you're lifting weights, just notice what it's like when you get to that point where you can't feel like you can lift it another time. And watch what happens when you lift it. And whatever it is, wherever that's coming from, get to know it intimately. Byka, good to see you. So this mind that you've been talking about, how do you experience it? What can you experience it? Oh, it experiences me and kind of pushes it back to me, and then I go, what is this? What is this? Wow. I'm like, whoa. I do more wow. Does it have some characteristic?

[47:52]

Like, is it friendly or is it? No. It's flowing. Moment to moment, nonstop flow. Even when I feel like it's stuck, always flowing. The center of your heart and the soul of your music. I said the center of your heart and the soul of your music. It's helped me a lot of times when I felt very sour.

[48:59]

Oh good. Yes. Well, I don't have a belief in a god. And, you know, we talk about mind enough that there's always this danger of turning it into sort of a god or an essence of some sort. But if it had qualities We wanted to have qualities.

[50:05]

We wanted to be human. We're nothing special. Gregory Bateson once said, you know, if there's a God of ecology, which is just the way things work, it's much less merciful than the God of the Old Testament. We're seeing that with global warming You know, that's the mind of the earth Talking back to us. Is that friendly? Well, you can call it friendly. Yeah, it's kind of nice that it's telling us that we're messing up you could call it unfriendly, but it's It's beyond the discriminations or the characteristics that we want to ascribe to it That's been a hard one for me. Actually, Mike and I had some discussions about this, about whether the universe is compassionate and friendly or not.

[51:13]

I'm just grateful to be alive right now. You know, when I thought that I might be dying in the Himalayas, and I looked to do a practice, and I started to do zazen, and I didn't want to do zazen, and I wound up doing a meta meditation, a meditation on compassion, and it really bothered me. I said, you know, how come I wasn't doing zazen? And I asked Sojin about this. And he said, well, when you're in that kind of position where you're facing possible death, it's just natural to want to cultivate compassion for everyone. I can't answer why, but it seems natural that it arises in response to our existence.

[52:22]

It's natural. fog and rain and sunshine are natural. Compassion and joy are like, you know, sunshine and cooling fog. I think this is... I...

[53:26]

Mm-hmm. If it helps your practice to do so, if it creates more compassion,

[55:07]

and wisdom do so. My hesitation about it is when you do that and then you hit a period where you deal with, you see the Holocaust or you see war and you go, where's that mind now? And you think somehow that mind's not there. And so then you can get disappointed and you run the danger of losing faith in mind if you try and narrow it. So that's the danger and the reason to not ascribe things to it. But it will be happy with you either way. One last question, I think. When she was asking her question, the basic response is, it preaches the Dharma painfully.

[56:37]

Maybe I'll leave it at that.

[56:42]

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