We're going to do things in a little different order today, since I'm running a little late. This is our last class. What I'd like to do, I'm going to write some strange things on the board, and while I'm doing that, I'd like to pass some things out. We have three handouts today, one of which you have to give back. The one you have to give back is an evaluation form, evaluating the class. And what I'd like to do is give you some time now at the beginning to start working on it. And maybe if you want to turn it in at the end of the class, that would be fine. I'd really like to get one from everybody. Please feel free to be anonymous or sign your name or add things on the back. if I haven't asked questions that you want to answer. If you want to answer some questions I haven't asked.

[01:03]

So this will help us. It will help me if I teach this class again, but also help other people who teach this class in the future. Your feedback in terms of how it's organized and what is useful to you will be very helpful to future students and teachers. The other two things we're handing out I think I'll hand out later. One is a bibliography, which is a very incomplete bibliography. But what it is, is a bibliography of what I used in preparing my talks, where I got my stuff. Most of the books in this library that are on the life of the Buddha are on basic Buddhism, are on that bookshelf. And I didn't use nearly all of them. The ones I did use I will return so that other people can use them. So while you're looking at the evaluation, and before we have our zazen, I'm going to make today's squiggles on the board.

[02:15]

All right. Okay.

[07:33]

OK, we can finish this later. I'd like to start the class with a few minutes of breathing. Make yourself comfortable. Let your belly soften. Take a few deep breaths. Let go of your day. It's so nice to sit here with everyone.

[13:02]

Everyone is so peaceful. I sort of feel like you already understand and I may just mess it up if I say something. We have one class left and I feel like, in a way, In most ways, we've just sort of scratched the surface of what we set out to do, and there's still a lot more that I'd like to scratch the surface of tonight. I'd like to start by going back to dependent origination, where we were last time. and move on to the Heart Sutra, which is the logical and spiritual extension of the whole idea of patika samapada, and talk a little bit about how we express all this in this particular practice, in this particular place.

[14:15]

So that's a lot to do. I talked at the end of last class a little bit about dependent origination in my family life. I gave the example of some of the vicious cycles that I get into with one of my teenagers. And I didn't get a chance to talk about how it goes the other way. I talked about how my attempts at mothering him sometimes made it hard for him to respond and that made me rev up my mothering and that made it harder for him to respond. And I started thinking about how how that wheel gets turned the other way, how it reverses in a positive direction.

[15:27]

And of course the first step in getting a vicious cycle to reverse is noticing that you're in a vicious cycle and noticing where you actually are. and where I actually was in my vicious cycle with my son was in the midst of my own anger. I was angry at his coach, I was angry at him, I was angry with myself for not being able to fix it. And as I looked at my anger and experienced my anger in my body It really took up, you know, a great deal of my energy. And as I thought about what was I angry about, you know, I was angry that my kid couldn't, wasn't being treated justly. Well, what was that about?

[16:30]

I was, I wanted to protect my kid. Well, we all want to protect our kids, you know, just like mother bears, we want to protect our cubs. From what? What did I want to protect him from? Well, I wanted to protect him from various things, but I also wanted to protect myself. It's my anger. And that's what was getting in the way. I wanted to protect myself from feeling inadequate. If I can't protect my kid, I feel like I'm an inadequate mother. And that really hurts. And I started following that back. And that turned out to have a lot of history in my own family. What it means to be a mother. What it means to be a good mother. What it means to be a good mother in my family is that your kids look good and they reflect well on you.

[17:31]

And that's what makes you happy and that's what's supposed to make them happy. But that's kind of upside down because parents are supposed to take care of kids and if your kids have to look good to make you feel good, who's taking care of who? So where the idea comes from that I have to be a good mother is that I better be good and my kids better be good because that gives me some identity and that whole That's the trap of being caught in self. And that need to be a good mother, to be somebody, it's a defense. It's a defense against the pain of impermanence. And that's delusion. And it's delusion in the classic kind of sense,

[18:35]

You know, people go crazy when they can't bear reality and they say, you know, I'm Jesus Christ or I'm from Mars or whatever. And I am a good mother or I am Fran or I am anybody. It's just as delusional. And it comes from the same root. It comes from the root of how very painful it is to really be with this reality, which is constantly changing. Very difficult, constantly letting go. So that brings us to the lesson for today, which is about emptiness. Emptiness is what there is, there isn't anything else. is the nature of existence. And for all the years that Buddha taught, that's really all he taught.

[19:39]

He taught it in a lot of different ways, and he said it in a lot of different ways. He taught it different ways to different people, and basically took it from two main points of view. From the point of view of investigating the minute particulars of human experience, and the whole mindfulness, all the mindfulness practices, the Abhidharma, are basically directing us to investigate the minute, moment-to-moment particulars of our individual experience. And each person's individual experience is completely different. No two people are operating with the same causes and conditions exactly at any given moment, because we're each made up of the same basic things, but each of us has our own history, and each of us has so many influences on us all the time.

[20:51]

So nobody else can really know how it feels to be in your particular body. Nobody else can really experience your experience. But, at the same time, when we get down to the bottom of what life is actually about, and we're really paying attention to what's actually going on, and get some of the ideas in the clutter cleared out, We all come to the same place. What is, is just this, this moment, this breath. That's always it, and it's always changing. So it's the change that's constant, and it's that constant flux that arises over and over again, that we all share, and that bottom, that unchangingness of attention that brings us to understanding our common nature.

[22:03]

The Heart Sutra expresses all this in a real condensed kind of way, and it also expresses all the other stuff that we've been talking about in a very condensed kind of way. It talks about dependent origination, it talks about the five skandhas, it talks about suffering and birth and death and all of it. Now Buddha didn't write the Heart Sutra and he didn't say the Heart Sutra, at least not in the form that we chant it in every day. But the Heart Sutra is the natural and inevitable expansion of the Buddha's basic teaching. The Heart Sutra, the form in which we study it, is kind of the product of centuries of study and practice by hundreds and hundreds of people.

[23:10]

But I would like to read you a little bit of what may be closer to the original. This is Thich Nhat Hanh's version of Buddha's talk called Neither Full Nor Empty, which, if you know the Heart Sutra, should sound familiar. The cast of characters, the main characters in this particular version are the venerable Sivasti and Ananda. But as you remember from our version in the Zendo, it's Shariputra and Avalokiteshvara are talking, or Shariputra. So, the important thing that I want you to pay attention to in this is the dialogue, the quality of the dialogue and the way

[24:16]

Buddha gets his point across because I think it's very clear. This is a great sort of insight into how the Sangha works. There was a... Buddha gave a talk which confused the monks. And the Venerable Svasti noticed that everybody was confused. And he noticed that he didn't quite get it either. And so he decided to kind of listen to what people were talking about and see if he could figure it out. Well, the monks asked Ananda, who was sort of a senior guy, to ask Buddha some questions. They were shy.

[25:18]

And they said, you know, Ananda, you can get away with this. Will you ask Buddha? This first question was, what is meant by the world? And what is meant by the dharmas? And in the sutras, the senior students are often a foil for the questions. And Buddha very patiently answers them as if they really didn't understand. So Buddha explains that the world is a collection of all things subject to change and dissolution. All dharmas are contained in 18 realms, the six sense organs, the six sense objects, the six sense consciousnesses, and all that. There are no dharmas apart from these realms. And that's why I said that the world is the collective whole of all things which possess the nature of change and dissolution. So Ananda then asked, You have often said that all dharmas are empty. What is meant by that? The Buddha said, Ananda, I have said that all dharmas are empty because all dharmas are without a separate self.

[26:25]

None of the sense organs, the sense objects, or the sense consciousnesses possess a separate individual self. Ananda said, Lord, you've said that the three gates of liberation are emptiness, signlessness, and aimlessness. And you've said that all dharmas are empty. Is it because all dharmas are subject to change and dissolution that they're also empty? And he says, yes, that's true, and I'm going to tell you some more about that. And so this is what he says. Ananda, today we're sitting in the dharma hall. and there are no markets, buffalos or villages inside the Dharma hall. There are only bhikkhus sitting and listening to the Dharma. So we can say that the hall is empty of all that is not here, and that it contains what is actually here. The Dharma hall is empty of markets, buffalos and villages, but it does contain bhikkhus.

[27:28]

Would you agree that that's correct? And they said yes, as we would agree that there are no buffaloes in the room here, and no markets, just students. So he says, well, after the talk, well, we're going to leave, and there will no longer be anybody in here. And at that moment, the dharma hall will be empty of markets, buffaloes, villages, and also you guys. You agree. Got that. Ananda, full always means full of something. Empty always means something. Empty of something. The words full and empty have no meaning of their own. So then people start to get confused. Could you explain some more? So he says, well, emptiness, we cannot say that emptiness is something which exists independently. Fullness is the same. You have to be full of something or empty of something. Emptiness of all dharmas refers to the fact that all dharmas are empty of a permanent, unchanging self, or nature.

[28:37]

There's nothing among the five aggregates, body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, that have an unchanging nature. And that's what you have to have an essential self. So we really need to study this. So then Ananda says, well, if all dharmas are without self, we understand this, but then how do we know they exist? So Buddha looked at the table in which there was a bowl of water. So he said, is the bowl full or is it empty? Ananda said, it's full of water. Ananda, take this bowl outside and empty it. Empty all the water out. So Ananda did. Okay, now is the bowl full or is it empty? Lord, it is no longer full. It is empty. Ananda, are you sure the bowl is empty?

[29:44]

I emptied it. I'm sure it's empty. He says the bowl is no longer full of water, but now it's full of air. So he got it. Okay. Ananda, this bowl can be either empty or full. Of course, whether there's emptiness or fullness depends on the presence of the bowl. Without a bowl, there would be no emptiness or fullness. It's just like the dharma hall." Ah, the bhikkhus suddenly exclaimed with one voice, Lord, then the dharmas do exist. The dharmas are real. The Buddha smiled. Ananda, don't be caught by words. If the dharmas, or phenomena, empty of self, their existence is not the existence of ordinary perception. Their existence has the same meaning as emptiness. Ananda joined his palms. Please explain further.

[30:47]

Ananda, we have spoken about an empty and a full bowl. We have spoken about an empty and a full dharma hall. I have briefly spoken about emptiness. Let me speak more about fullness. Although we've agreed that the bowl on the table is empty of water, if we look deeply, we will see that it is not entirely true. Buddha lifted the bowl and looked at Ananda. Ananda, among the interwoven elements that have given rise to the bowl, do you see water? Yes, Lord. The potter would not have been able to mix the clay and make the bowl. Just so. Looking deeply, we can see the presence of water in the bowl, even though we said it was empty of water. The presence of the bowl depends on the presence of water. Ananda, can you see the fire element in the bowl? Do you see where he's going with this? So he goes all through the five skandhas and dependent origination.

[32:02]

And then he talks about interpenetration, which means that the presence of one thing implies the presence of everything else. Within this, there is that. And that's where we started here. Waves are water. Water is waves. At present, in this room, there are no markets, buffaloes, or villages. But that's only from one viewpoint. In reality, we couldn't be here if there weren't markets and buffaloes and villages, because the whole society is one piece. And that's the basic meaning of emptiness. This is because That is. Nothing can exist independently. Is this to be grasped intuitively, or intellectually, or both?

[33:13]

Well, both. Or neither. Both or neither. Where's your question coming from? Well, because intellectually, And especially reading Thich Nhat Hanh's version of that. So eloquent. And I can kind of understand it. Yeah, I can see that. And it seemed to me like an intellectual exercise, actually. I don't know what the question is, actually. Well, it just seems like a lot of the Zazen As far as I know. Hopefully not. So, you're wondering how you get from here to there. Right. Good question.

[34:17]

That's a good question. When you were talking, the question I had was, how does this apply to my life? What does this mean to me now? I think that it applies to the pitfalls of saying, this is this way. This is a bad person. This is a rotten kid. This is unbearable. Yeah, I think you're getting close.

[35:20]

And hopefully, towards the end of the class, we'll pull it together. I think that what you're bringing up is a real essential point, which is that they're trying to make a real logical argument that form and emptiness are one thing, And in some sense, that takes us farther from our experience of it. And if we don't have any experience, any inner experience of that, how is this going to help us get there? Especially those of us whose thinking tends to get in the way of our experiencing, which is probably all of us. And this is the problem with all the teachings on the one hand, and yet we chant the Heart Sutra in temples everywhere.

[36:31]

It's chanted two or three times a day. And it's studied in great detail. And anything you read about Zen, which is the most non-intellectual, or some people would even say anti-intellectual, of the Zen schools, if you listen carefully, you will hear evidence of all of this. It's the foundation on which the Zen school is built. But the story, the Buddha teaching story that the Zen school goes back to, actually, is one that doesn't have any words in it. The Zen school really traces its source to the story of Buddha and Mahakasyapa.

[37:38]

and the famous story where Buddha's giving a lecture and he holds up a flower and everybody's trying to think, what does he mean by that? And Mahakasyapa just smiles and the Buddha smiles back and says, you got it. who have the transmission of the teaching. And Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary on that is, teacher holds up a flower, he wants you to look at the flower, he wants you to see a flower, nothing fancy. But everybody's trying to, you know, come up with a clever interpretation. But then, of course, Thich Nhat Hanh goes on to tell you all about flowers and garbage, and hopefully you all read that because it's so lovely. The unity of flowers and garbage, which is also the unity of form and emptiness. But what I want to talk about is

[38:51]

your question, Sue, about how this applies to us. This is an attempt at a picture of how this applies to us. And obviously what I've got here is a whole bunch of dualities, opposites, left and right, and hope and despair, and relative and absolute, and water and waves. And I've scattered them around purposely. And in the middle I've got a scale, or a seesaw. And what I think practice is about is Where practice happens is right here.

[39:55]

It's where the opposites meet. It's why we do this so much. It's why we sit traditionally with our legs crossed, and why we sit with our hands like this. The one side holds up the other, and the two become one. This is really It's like a chemistry set, more like an alchemical sort of process. When hope and despair meet, when you can hold them both in the palm of your hands, something happens. So when you sit down, and you decide that you're going to sit for 40 minutes or 7 days or till the bell rings, you're expressing the unity of opposites, whether you experience it or not, you're expressing it.

[41:25]

manifest some determination to contain within this body all the many opposing and conflicting feelings and ideas and stuff that may come up. So you're expressing, there's all this mental activity perhaps, and stillness. Whatever arises, you make a commitment just to be with it, not to act it out. So when you're acting on stuff, when you're sitting in Sashin and it's just too tedious and you figure, hell with it, I'm going home, that's

[42:36]

getting caught in preferences. And when you stay with it, it's, you know, no matter what's going on in your mind, you're expressing the, actually, the understanding of all these dualities being one. You're making them one. just by paying attention to them. Once during a Sashin, when I was having a lot of trouble with my legs, I asked Mel how to handle the pain, and why it was necessary to sit this way in so much pain. And he said to me, When you cross your legs and you join your hands, you're bringing together the masculine and the feminine in yourself.

[43:52]

And whatever arises from that union, whatever comes forth from that union, please treat it as your own children. So when you treat whatever arises from this effort as your own children, when you pay that kind of attention, something is transformed. So it's the flame of your attention that cooks all these different ingredients and turns them into something that's beyond, that's different from duality, that's not here or there. And our ceremonies and our services express

[45:05]

our understanding. Whether you understand it or not, they express this understanding. And that's another level of form and emptiness that I want to try to talk about. And form being not different from emptiness, and emptiness being not different from form. In terms of the forms, our particular forms of practice here, and I talked a little bit about zazen. We also do a lot of services and bowing and chanting. And all of these things that we do, all of these forms, have arisen from the collective experience in Zazen of hundreds of people who have practiced before us. And one of the things that we hear a lot about in the Zen Do is Bodhisattvas.

[46:16]

We're always dedicating our services to Bodhisattvas. We have a Bodhisattva ceremony. And the Bodhisattva ideal is something that was around in the time of the Buddha, both in his teaching and in his life. At the time of the Buddha, there were various levels of aspiration that were recognized, and the highest level of aspiration was the aspiration to be a bodhisattva. A bodhisattva dedicates all their effort to the enlightenment of others, to attaining enlightenment not for themselves, but for the benefit of all being. And this is not a martyr kind of a thing. This is a kind of natural outcome of fully understanding that everything's connected to everything else. If something is suffering, it's connected to me. And if I really understand that deep inside, I understand that I can't attain any kind of freedom for myself alone.

[47:27]

So the bodhisattva ideal is an ideal not just of enlightened behavior, but of complete understanding all the way through, that permeates one's entire life and the life of everyone around them. And it's often contrasted to the arhat, who is somebody who has attained some understanding for themselves. and then there are various other levels of aspiration. But the Bodhisattva ideal is what all of Mahayana Buddhism is based on, and certainly where our practice is coming from. The vows of the Bodhisattva are the four vows that we chant all the time. Beings are numberless.

[48:29]

I vow to save them or awaken with them, depending on how we're translating it. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to attain it or become it. We chant those after every lecture. at the full moon ceremony, bodhisattva ceremony, in the ordination ceremonies, in wedding ceremonies. In a way, the services, the chanting, abbot walking around making his morning greeting, the abbot walking in, or whoever's doing the service, walking in with a jisha, holding a piece of incense.

[49:34]

These are different ways of holding up the flower. We may not see it, but they're attempts. During Sashin, someone is the abbot's jisha, maybe, usually for the whole sasheen, follows him around with a piece of incense all day, brings him coffee. What's that about? I think that the teacher has attendance to attend, to pay attention, to listen, so that we can see, all of us by watching, what that looks like, so that we can see our own student-ness, our own relationship. A teacher can't teach if there's nobody to listen. And so, somebody is there paying as complete attention as they can to the teacher, so the teacher can teach, so we can see what that process is about.

[50:47]

It's all going on at a lot of different levels. It's not to put the teacher above us or because the teacher can't get his own cup of coffee. Sometimes the teacher really can't find his shoes, but that's really sort of not the point. So it's not an accident that we have our service after our zazen. We have our zazen, we do it, and then we get up and we try and express it. And whether or not we understand what we're chanting, we're expressing it. And that's kind of, it's there as another kind of opportunity for us. And sometimes we complain about the forms, and we want them to be different.

[51:54]

And we may say, well, it could be anything. Why don't we do it my way? And it could be anything, except when we do it my way, then I'm caught in partiality, and then it's not expressing emptiness anymore, it's expressing my way. And that's why it doesn't matter how good your way is, the teacher will always throw it back at you. And when you come up with a suggestion that comes out of an impartial view, everybody will readily accept it. And so we have a lot of opportunities as If you really want to practice fully with trying to bring form and emptiness together, the best place to do it is on a practice committee, where we decide how to pass out the Sutra cards, and whether to change a certain word in a certain chant, and we get to look at your

[53:13]

impartiality and your understanding and your patience and your impatience and everybody else's stuff right there, all about how should we hand out the sutra cards and was the meal too slow during the last sasheen? Did your legs hurt more than mine? Is incense environmentally correct? Is incense environmentally correct? Who's allergic to it? That's wonderful. So now you understand all about form and emptiness. Did everybody get a chance to read The Heart of Understanding? I hope you all got a chance to read it. It's wonderful. And it's even better if you can hear him give these talks. I think you get beyond the words because you experience it in his voice, in his presence.

[54:19]

The Dharma really can't be written down. It can only be When you see it, you get it right away. Somebody like Tukna Han gives a talk, you kind of can't miss it. On the other hand, you can't carry it home with you either. Do you know when he's coming to speak again? He usually comes around in the spring, most years. Every other year. Every other year, is it? Yeah, he was here last spring. I don't know, maybe in... Jina, sister, Jina, I mean, it's been two sisters who ran that, from village. I haven't had a chance to see them. I haven't had a chance to see Thich Nhat Hanh, actually, the last few times he's been around. So I think I've talked enough.

[55:25]

Let's take another few minutes and then... For me, getting beyond dualistic thinking has had a lot to do with learning not to give up preferences and self-centered thinking, but learning to observe it and contain it.

[59:08]

I think my first experiences of this were really when my first child was an infant and he would wake up many times in the night and I would just go and pick him up and feed him whatever he needed. And I didn't think about it. I just went. And I didn't there weren't a lot of ideas connected with it. He cried, I picked him up, I nursed him. It was all very kind of organic. But it was also very endless. And it was very, it was endless in the same way that monastic practice is endless, in the same way that tzatchin is endless. And I had spent the year prior to having my first child at Tassajara fighting the schedule every step of the way.

[60:16]

Every time the bell rang, I said, God damn it, why do I have to do this? I spent a lot of the one practice period just scheming on the life of the person who was supposed to be ringing the bell and who I was certain was invariably asleep and not ringing it in time. And another whole practice period inventing menus that were far superior to the ones that were being offered by a cook. But Somehow, when the baby cried, I got it. I heard the bell, and I woke up. And I thought, ah, this is what they were trying to teach me.

[61:18]

The alarm clock rings, and you just go. The baby cries, and you just go. So when the newness of the baby wore off, and the fatigue set in, I wasn't always even minded about it, and there were times when I thought, oh my God, what does the kid want now? But I had had that experience of just going, of just doing it, without thinking of self, without preference, without expecting anything in return. And I think that's a kind of prototype experience, and you get it wherever you get it. But in Zen, you get it from training. And you get it from being put in a narrow, like a snake in a bamboo tube. You get from being put in a confined situation in which you keep bumping up against yourself. You keep bumping up against your preference.

[62:20]

And I remember saying to Mel something once about how I felt like I had been banging my head against a wall. for years and years and finally I had a little hole in it and I saw that there was some light on the other side. That's what training will do. You get a lot of headaches when you bang your head against a wall. But when you see that there's light, then you begin to have a clue Anybody want to say anything? Well, yes. In one of your handouts, it seems to me there's a quote from the Third Patriarch.

[63:24]

It's about don't do blank, just give up your opinions. That's his thing. What is it? What's the blank? Cease to cherish opinions. Don't worry about practice or whatever. And when I read that, I thought, well, how do I do that? And of course, I knew the answer. But it didn't seem like a very good one or satisfying. You don't want to give up your opinions? No. Yeah, I could give up. Well, yes I do, but no I don't, too. Which opinions don't you want to give up? No, I would give them all up, but only temporarily. Well, for how long would you? Well, I don't know. and I get other people's opinions, and I live with a walking opinion maker, you know, and it's just, I see it so clearly, you know, how harsh it is, and how hostile it is, and it's just, what do you do?

[64:56]

When it's directed at you? Yeah, or when it's just directed about our mutual topic of conversation. It's real hard to deal with, it's so jarring, and I realize The thing that just blows me away, and I don't know how to pronounce this, this thing on page 99 of what the Buddha taught, Sabba, [...] Sutra, Sutra? I guess it's Buddha who says, bhikkhus, I say that the destruction or getting rid of cares and troubles is possible for one who knows and who sees. And then he talks about how to do that. I could see us doing a year on that alone, just that one paragraph. There are cares and troubles which are to be got rid of by insight. This is at the top of 100.

[65:57]

There are cares and troubles which are to be got rid of by restraint. There are cares and troubles which are to be got rid of by use, et cetera, by endurance, avoidance, dispersal, and by culture. So which of these approaches do you think might work with The critic you live with? Well, I'm not sure, but when you talked about the baby, you know, it seems like a lot of that is endurance. You just endure it. But that seems so painful. And it seems like, I mean, I feel like that's what I'm doing. Enduring it. The critic, you know, my own and others. And I'm not sure how to do that. There are pitfalls in doing that. What are the pitfalls? Being a martyr, holding my breath, just waiting till it's over, hiding, because, you know, for me, endurance is about hiding and just waiting till it's over, and not really experiencing.

[67:07]

So that's another form of the same thing, in a way. Because when somebody's attacking, They're also trying to get rid of some discomfort. And they're wanting you to take it on. It feels like that. So you don't want to take it on. And you don't want to throw it back. So how do you meet it? That's what I don't do well. I don't know. Well, see, that's really hard, and that's living right there, you know, kind of at the crux of it. But I was thinking that Sue might say, number one, there are cures and troubles which are to be gotten rid of by insight, because sometimes And I'm able to understand why he is or she is behaving in this way.

[68:21]

And for some strange reason, there seems to be a buffer zone. And I'm seeing that person apart from myself, and I don't feel attacked personally. I think that's accurate when in the heart searches, The full understanding is something there's nothing to get angry about unless like you're someone getting on the team or something. The full understanding is you're not angry about it. You don't respond that way anymore. But the pitfall in that one is Well, that's a big barrier to insight, is your opinion about why you don't have any insight or your self-criticism about your insight. But I think one of the fundamental insights has to do with suffering, and that if you think about suffering and what we do out of suffering,

[69:31]

I think it becomes real clear. I spend a lot of time watching people who seem to do well in hostile encounters. I've watched Mel a lot, particularly when he'll give a lecture and people will ask real hostile questions. And I've really learned a lot from watching his response. Periodically, he's not around as much as he used to be, but periodically there are people who will repeatedly ask hostile questions, lecture after lecture after lecture, and every week they're there, and every week he has to deal with them. watched and I noticed that he's very kind to these people and generally quite patient and not particularly patient with everyone so I really have paid attention to that and I just tried to do it for a while, you know, and I try and pick the most difficult person in my

[70:52]

everyday sphere and see if I could do that and see what happened. And it was very interesting to me. I've practiced this for years and have found that sometimes, particularly in work situations, when you're on a committee with somebody, you know, and there's this very oppositional person and nothing can get done on the committee because this one person always It has to pick every knit there is, you know, and throws it back. It's really difficult, but sometimes, there have been several occasions in which those people who I was just really about ready to strangle, have become really good friends. And people who, It seemed that just being with that discomfort and seeing them as, maybe their obnoxiousness often being proportional to their own discomfort in the situation, has really transformed the situation, at least for me.

[72:11]

I don't know that it's changed the people, Annie, although sometimes it does if it's somebody you're really in close relationship with. with it really can transform the whole situation. And then it's kind of like getting the dharma wheel turning in the other direction. I think these people pick us when we're ready.

[73:12]

Or maybe when we're not. But, I mean, I think there have been times when an inordinate number of these people were unavoidable. And when I was just up against it continually. And, I mean, right now I'm surrounded by people who are really delightful to work with. Most of them. But then, you know, I can... But I think that when you most need it, these people magically turn up. And yeah, it is exhausting. It is incredibly exhausting. It's a tremendous effort. But practice is not easy. You guys are on this path, I'm afraid. You want an easy path, you need a different religion. Well, which one is easier? Suzuki Yoneda Roshi used to recommend drugs.

[74:17]

Right, but that's not a religion. Well, you know, he said if you want an easy way, he said drugs was better. Of course, we all came from drugs. Right. What did he know about drugs? That's right. He actually, he had taken LSD. People gave him LSD. Somebody gave him acid. People gave him acid. He wasn't very impressed by it. What was their experience? Well, Mortimer Earhart used to recommend prefrontal lobotomy. And suspending all your organs in tepid water, you know, and then you would not have any problems left. Well, I have thought about this, like Islam is really hard. I mean, you've got to get five times a day, you've got to get down It's only once or twice. Sure. Nine times. Sure. Is it nine times? No, it's five. No, I mean, in the morning at nine times, you know. Oh, yeah, well.

[75:18]

Anywhere you get to go and meet your wife, you know, so that's a great deal. You get to work it all off. Here you go, get that opportunity. Oh, in Islam, you can't go and beat your wife. No, in Islam, you might have five wives and you have to beat them all. It's exhausting. It's exhausting, yes, that's right. But good for the upper arm strength. Well, you can, if you want to do it more times a day, you have to go to a monastery. Right. And then, you know, to go to practice prayer, you can I don't know, the bell rings all the time. About, oh, four, five, six periods of Zazen a day and some more. About 20 minutes rest after each meal. That's true. Be nice to everybody and stay on the schedule. Well, it's hard to be... That's the quote for a bell I always like.

[76:20]

Be nice to everyone and stay on the schedule. Yeah, it's hard to be nice to everyone if you stay on the schedule. You get very tired. And it's very hard to be nice to everyone when you're that tired. Because that takes energy, being nice to people. And you really find out how self-centered you are when your body is that close to the edge of what it can do. question is energy whether it's sort of contained or whether it's released you know that's where it always gets to and that point for me you know the point at which you're you realize that actually you're tiring yourself out by defending yourself you're really clenched up and if you release you find block things, you know, and that's so tiring.

[77:27]

Well, that's the misfortune of being a strong person, I think, that people who are very strong can hold on for a long time. And I think that's why people who are, particularly people who are sick, often find that your body is in a compromised state, you can't do that. And ego and body are real closely connected. When your body is in good shape, there's a lot you can do, but it's hard to let go. But when your body is strong, it can also stretch, and so you can contain to contain by closing down. When you close down, you can't contain very much.

[78:28]

But if you stretch and make yourself a big container, then you can hold everything. That's what practice can do for you. But stretching hurts, you know. It's just like you do a lot of physical stretching. sore the next day. I really want to thank you all for your wonderful attention and great questions and coming every week.

[81:35]

If you didn't get an evaluation form, I have a few more. If you don't have time to finish it tonight, I do have a box on the porch. And I will read them and copy them and pass them on to the committee of teachers I've been asked by the President to mention that anyone who's been in this class and if you're practicing here, if you're interested in supporting the Zen Center by becoming a member or friend of the Zen Center and you're not, you can ask about that. I'm glad to talk to you about it, or Ross, and maybe all of you already There's one more thing.

[82:39]

Oh, we have two handouts. One is a bibliography, which, as I said at the beginning, is a very partial bibliography. It's the books that I used in putting together the class. But if you follow your nose from these books, you will find many other books. many other books by the authors on this list and many other books just in those shelves of this library on basic Buddhism. And the other handout is from Bob Paulson by way of Ross. Bob started this kind of listed basic Buddhist tenets or beliefs, and he's got some of the lists, he's got more of the lists you can use to complement the other lists that I handed out, and Ross

[83:56]

Yeah, the next course will be on Zen and it will be taught by Meili and Alan. And when's it going to be? It's going to sign up on the bulletin board. I think it's like March 4th or something. Skip a week. Yes, skip a week. Next week at this time will be the potluck. Next week at this time will be a potluck dinner. Which is a new thing here. It's a quarterly Meili will teach the first couple, more or less in the camp where we've left off, and then Alan, Meili's going to Japan, and Alan will teach the other couple. There's an exposition of women going to Suzuki Roshi's temple for a practice period.

[85:22]

Evaluation, you can give them to me or to Ross, Thank you very much. It's been lots of fun.

[85:30]

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