Hi, the day is the truth, the target is worth... Morning. I remember when... I used to live with my family, and I used to live here. And Daniel was four, five. And... When we had sashin, I would go back home where Laurie and Ellen lived. And sometimes the TV would be on, Daniel would be watching the TV, which, I have to say, he rarely did all of his life. Never watched TV. He always said, what do I want to watch somebody else's stuff for? When there's so much I can do myself. What should I watch somebody else doing all this stuff when I can do my own stuff? So anyway, but he would watch Sesame Street sometimes.

[01:05]

So I'd walk in on Sesame Street and sit down during the break and watch Sesame Street. And Sesame Street, they have the letter S. Sit. Stand. Step. Stop. And the picture, just bare picture, bare... Nothing but the chair and the person. Sit. Stand. Step. Stop. Pure Zen. It was totally pure Zen. And I'd come back all inspired. Just sit. Just step. Just stand.

[02:06]

Just start. Just stop. That's all there is. But what does that depend on? There are two forces in our life that we're always dealing with. One is gravity, which pulls everything down. The other is life force or spirit, which pulls everything up. So this is our life. And where we live is right in the middle. So every step we take, everything we do is determined by gravity. And everything we do is determined by spirit, what I call spirit. That which is reaching to heaven and reaching to hell.

[03:15]

So all spiritual, all religious philosophy is based on heaven and hell. Gravity and spirit. And they call it different things. But they all call it heaven and hell. Even in Buddhism. In Buddhism there are various hells and various heavens. 32 heavens. And I can't remember how many hells, but a lot of them. And if you look at the wheel of life, the heavenly realm is up here. The hell realm is down here. And then the in-between places are the human realm, the animal realm, the fighting demon realm, and the hungry ghost realm. Those are like kind of in-between the high and the low.

[04:23]

But finding our balance, finding our place moment by moment at the intersection of heaven and hell. Or at the intersection of gravity and spirit. That's what we're always seeking. It's called middle way. That's one expression of middle way. There are various expressions of middle way. One is not too much, not too little. And the other is the middle between birth and death. If you try to define birth and death, you can't really do it. Because it's that place where existence and non-existence meet. Which is not quite what you can put your finger on.

[05:30]

So we say no birth, no death. Actually, because nothing is ever that positively formed. There's always the interaction, the movement, the pull and push is what we call our self. There's no fixed self. There's simply the push and pull of the mean. Trying to find that place which we always want to put our finger on but is elusive. So we're always looking for it. We're always finding it. This is called practice. Practice is how you keep finding the middle way. The way that is not pulled down by gravity and does not ignore gravity, does not ignore spirit.

[06:37]

One of the problems that most religions have I don't want to say the problem with religion. The problem that most religions have is too much emphasis on heaven. And not enough credit given to hell. So the middle way is to take into account the earthiness of things. To respect the earthiness of things. At the same time, respect the heavenly quality of things. But to want to just go to heaven is a mistake. It's a mistake because it's one-sided. You can't have one without the other. So the middle way for Buddhists is to find heaven in the midst of hell

[07:51]

and hell in the midst of heaven. To find gravity in the midst of spirit and spirit in the midst of gravity. So when we sit tzazen, we find ourselves sometimes in hell, sometimes in heaven. But they depend on each other. They totally depend on each other. So how do you allow yourself, how do you find yourself, which is neither in the heavenly realm or in the hell realm? In the human realm. The human realm is the, in a Kabbalistic understanding,

[09:02]

the human is the pillar that connects heaven and earth. So, you know, where is the point at which heaven and earth find the mean? In Buddhism, in Zen, we say here, the ki, just below the navel. Ki is the center of our body and the center point of our body-mind.

[10:03]

We say the ki, the sea of ki, which means the ocean of tranquility. In music we say the ki of sea, which is neither sharp nor flat. No sharps, no flats. Just... simple. Most simple ki. This is the place where heaven and earth meet. Right here. We found it. And it's located in our body. That's where the foundation of spirit, where spirit arises.

[11:13]

You have a gut feeling. And it's the place where gravity finds its support. So it's the dividing line. And it's also the meeting place. And when we sit zazen, this is where we put our attention. We don't think. The mind is a great, wonderful organ of the brain. The brain is a great, wonderful organ for thinking. But it sits on top. So it has to be like a ship, a boat, a sailboat. A sailboat has all these wonderful sails and the wind fills the sails and the boat moves along. But it has to have a heavy keel. Otherwise it tips over. So these wonderful sailboats, when you see them in the dry dock, they have these big, long weights on the bottom.

[12:22]

So this is the weight. This is what keeps the mind from flying off. And one of the problems we have in our world is that we have all these minds that are working full speed 24 hours a day. With very little ballast. So in zazen, it's all ballast. We don't care so much about the mind, except that we don't ignore the mind. We don't ignore the thinking mind or the brain. But the brain is in the service at that time. The brain is in the service of the hara, instead of just doing its own thing. But it wants to do its own thing. You know, the purpose of the brain is to think.

[13:25]

And it's trained to do that, programmed to do that, and it does it without stopping. So in zazen, we give our mind the opportunity to rest. You know, we rest the body, the body gets tired, so we lie down and go to sleep. But the mind seems to never get tired. The brain, I mean, never seems to get tired. But it does get tired. After we have a good, refreshing sleep, you wake up and you feel the mind is crisp, and we don't realize that the mind gets tired. Anyway, but the purpose of the mind is to think, so we don't try to stop the mind. Why try to stop? It's like putting your finger in the dike. It's not going to work. And there's no need to cut it off.

[14:28]

But we keep putting, directing the mind into the service of the hara, or the body. This is zazen. So there's a term, cutting off the root of thinking, you know, or stopping the thinking mind. That doesn't mean to stop thinking. It means to direct the thinking to zazen. To direct the mind, that's why we say keep bringing back the mind. Recollection, the practice of recollection, to keep bringing the mind back, because the mind is like this ox that keeps running off. You know, it's a wild ox and it keeps running off. And we see how untamed it is in zazen.

[15:30]

So we're zazen cowboys. Keep pulling the mind back in, pulling it, oh boy, come on back, over and over again. But, you know, this is a hard to tame, impossible to tame animal. There are animal tamers who don't try to tame the mind, to tame the horses. Horse trainers who don't try to lasso the horse. They just get up on top of the horse and sit with the horse and make love to the horse. And the horse likes it. And then the horse is tamed, because they want to be tamed. You know, you don't have to break the horse. You don't have to break the horse in. All you have to do is love the horse so that the horse loves the rider.

[16:35]

And the horse naturally tames itself. So zazen is something like that too, you know. You don't try to break the mind or to demand something of the mind. You simply ride the mind out. You know, when you have a thought, it's enjoyable, enjoy the thought and then let go of it. The main thing is not being attached to your horse. When it's time to ride the horse, you ride the horse. When it's time to get off, you get off. When the thought comes, enjoy the thought. If it's enjoyable, for a moment, hold this enjoyable thought and then come back to zazen. Don't fight with your thoughts, don't fight with your mind.

[17:37]

Learn how to go with things, go with the mind, go with the thoughts. But let go of the thoughts and keep coming back. This is what I do. Oh yeah, zazen, zazen. Finding the mean all the time. With pain, you know, how do you find the mean with pain so that you don't fall into hell or try to go to heaven? People think that, this conception that meditation practice will put you into heaven. Really? Zazen practice puts you into the human realm.

[18:45]

You find yourself as a human. That's zazen practice, it's how to be a human being. Not how to go to heaven or descend to hell, but how to be a human being. The word for bodhisattva, the term for bodhisattva means mature person. That's what it means, mature person. How do you be a mature person? That's what you do in zazen, you're not trying to do something extraordinary. You're trying to be as ordinary as possible. How do you be an ordinary human being? Well, you stay in the middle between heaven and hell. If you want to go to heaven in zazen, you will surely go to hell. If you don't like what's happening and want something, you'll go to hell.

[19:57]

But you also go to heaven, and then you say, this is it, then you go to hell. So as a human, you just stay with what you have. And this is where you want to be. Right here in the middle, so you don't fall off to one side, and you don't fall off to the other side. You don't fall into heaven, and you don't fall into hell. You stay right there, where heaven and hell meet. And then you experience heaven, and you experience not hell, but pain. You just accept pain as a sensation. And you just accept heaven as a sensation. Without being attached to either one. So forget heaven and hell.

[21:06]

Just stay in the middle. And experience the sensations. And enjoy them. If you just allow yourself to experience them, you will enjoy your life. And then you will have great faith in your life and in your practice. And you will have joy. Which is not over-exuberant. And you will have energy, which is not over-active. Very steady. That's called tranquility. And the ability to adjust, so that you don't get stuck in some position, is called workableness.

[22:15]

Workableness is the work that we do in Zazen. It's called workableness. To continually adjust. Not get stuck. Not get pulled down by gravity. Not get pulled up to heaven. Because the heavenly realm is not permanent. And the hell realm is not permanent. But the human realm is the realm of just this, just now. Just stand up, just sit down, just do. That's the eternal realm. Just being an ordinary human being in its fullest sense. So even though we're born as human beings, and even though we have the potential,

[23:27]

we're not fully human. We're not really fully human. Although we have all of the ingredients to be fully human, we have to mature into being human. That's why people, you can see they're killing each other, wanting power, wanting, addicted to greed, callousness, not understanding each other, ignoring people's sensitivities. This is because people have the potential to be people, but they're not fully human. They haven't evolved themselves into their full potential as humans. So this is the world. And we don't live long enough, you know, 70, 80 years, to mature.

[24:31]

So the maturity of a human being takes a long time, you know. We wait until we're 21, you know, 21 years, to be an adult. That's a long time. So it makes it difficult to be a human being. In this world, we'll always have these problems. But within these problems, we have to keep making the effort to mature human beings. I think that's our effort, and that's the practice of Buddhism, is to realize that we're not yet fully human. And to work to reach our potential as humans. With much respect, Mel, I want to ask for your help to understand this on a more subtle level.

[25:42]

And that is, I think my experience is that the human condition carries with it all of the six realms. All of? All of the realms. Of course. And that even for one who has a very right practice, that it's not possible to always just be in the middle way of the human realm. And I'm thinking of the story of a Zen master whose child dies, who speaks about delusion. And his child dies, and he's distraught, and one of his senior students comes to him and says, but what about this, this is just delusion. And he said that the death of a child is the greatest delusion of all. There's inherent pain, there's inherent all of those qualities, heaven and hell, in our lives as human beings. Yeah, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about them. It doesn't mean that the human... Is it a matter of living long enough that we're not troubled by those things that we stay in some tranquil, healthy inner self?

[26:46]

No, no. I'm talking about how we understand our life, for one thing. When we talk about illusions, you know, and delusions, that's a very tricky place. The fact that your child died doesn't mean that that's not an illusion, right? That's a fact. And if you didn't feel grief, you would not be fully human. Yeah. I don't know why you didn't understand my... Where I'm grappling is... Maybe it takes many, many codices of lifetimes to reach a kind of way to be always equanimous and tranquil in the events of one's life. But I think I get caught struggling to always stay in this human realm

[27:51]

where I contain all of these other places. And so how do I coexist with those other places when they arise? With compassion for yourself. When I say, this is the place to do this, it doesn't mean that that's what we do. That's where our effort is. So it's eternal effort. It's not like someday we'll be there. It's eternal effort toward a goal we can't make. Okay? But we have to do it. It's like you're drawn in this direction and you can't be attached to the fact that there will be a culmination to it. Don't think about the end. Just think about what you have to do, which means that I can't do this. I can't do it, but you do it anyway. So it's like we do it, the thing that we can't do.

[28:52]

But there's nothing else we can do except to do that thing which we can't do perfectly. So none of us does it perfectly, and we're always falling off. But we're falling off and getting on, falling off, getting on. This is what zazen is, falling off and getting on. I mean, it's right there. You want to sit zazen, and you want to be perfect, but you're always falling off. And you keep coming back, and you fall off, and you come back, over and over and over again. That's our life. If it was perfect in the sense of attainable, you should do something else. It's not attainable. Otherwise, you lose the spirit of striving. When you lose the spirit of striving, you lose yourself.

[29:53]

So it's always more than you can grasp. Always something more out of reach, you know. That's our practice, is reaching for something that's out of reach. And so we're never quite there. So there are some people, you know, you see people that are mature, and those people stand out in some way as mature humans. And those people become our examples, like Buddha, right? But it's just like plants, you know. The children are beautiful. You know, the buds are beautiful. But then as maturity goes on, it needs cultivation to keep them

[30:59]

maintaining their maturity, to nurture them into maturity. So we're all in a different place, you know. The Lotus Sutra talks about this. All these plants are in a different place, and have different faces and different dispositions, and so forth, and different degrees of maturity. What did you want to say? Alice Tribe showed me this a little while ago. A lot of you know Fran Tribe. When she was dying, I was with him one day, and he said to me, you know, there's no birth, and there's no death. He said that with deep understanding. And he paused, and took a deep breath, and said, but death stinks. Yeah. Sue?

[32:06]

I want to get back to Sesame Street. We all want to get back to Sesame Street. I think maturity, those of us who are mature from one moment to the next, remind the rest of us, when we forget, about one step. Just sit. There's some sort of great calming, centering, in being reminded of that. We have to be reminded over and over again. Sometimes people will say something, or will say something, and then down the line, we'll say, jeez, you know, people aren't doing that anymore.

[33:07]

Well, saying something one time is not enough. If there's something we have to understand, we have to say it over and over and over again. That's why we say the same, every lecture is the same. It's just like reminding us of what we're doing over and over and over again, because it's so easy to just wander off. So we have to keep gathering together, gathering it together, over and over again. I'm a little confused by some of the metaphors that you used. You speak about this balance between earth and heaven, and gravity and spirit, mind and body, and then practice looks like the middle. So this practice would be both the body and the mind. So where is the place of the mind in this practice? Yeah, the mind. What does it mean, the thinking mind?

[34:13]

Where is the place of the thinking mind? Well, the mind is in the service of something. If the mind is not in the service of something, then the mind makes its own assumptions and becomes its own boss. So when the mind becomes its own boss and is not in the service of the body or of the conscience or of the humanity, then it becomes self-serving. It can become self-serving. So the mind needs to be in the service of something. So in Zazen, the mind is in the service of Zazen. When eating, the mind is in the service of eating.

[35:16]

When thinking about something, about a subject, the mind is in the service of that subject. So the mind needs to be always connected to a subject. When it's not connected to a subject, it can have free reign to imagine or to think, and there are times for that too. But the history of civilization is the history of what the mind is in the service of, the thinking mind.

[36:18]

And so the basic dichotomies are it's in the service of good or it's in the service of evil. So in Zen practice, the mind is in the service of practice, serves the practice in its capacity to think. So there's the mind, the emotions, the feelings, and the body, and consciousness, but the hara is the center. And we tend to think of the thinking mind as being the leader. As far as the mind goes, so goes everything else. But that's true. But the mind has to be in the service of something,

[37:19]

even though the mind is leading. It's the leading horse, but there has to be a driver, and the driver is here. And we ride the horse of the mind, rather than the mind riding the horse. There's a... Well, anyway, I don't know if that satisfies your question. I guess I'm having a little problem with thinking about the earth and gravity as hell. Oh, well, that's just one way of thinking about it. It's not hell, no. Because, in fact, the grounding that we get gives some stability and peace to our lives, as opposed to being off in the spirit, floating around in some other realm.

[38:24]

And so using hell... I mean, there's all sorts of terms, Mother Earth and Nurturing Earth... Yeah, of course. I'm just talking about the different ways that it's looked at. I'm not saying that it's hell. I'm just talking about the polarities that are commonly used. I'm not saying the earth is hell. Mother Earth. Mother is the nurturing aspect. I mean, being human on earth has hell in it. Yes. But it isn't. No, it's not hell. No, it's not. That's right. Correct. Yeah. You spoke of human beings as needing a lot of time to mature. Say that again? You said that human beings need a lot of time to ripen, to mature. Do you think the human race, collectively, is maturing?

[39:25]

Back in B.C., whatever. Well, it seems to be maturing very slowly. What signs are there of that? We're looking for them. We're looking. Well, whenever there is a force, a dominant force, then there's an equal force that meets it. So the dominant force right now is dominance, actually. But there's an opposite force which will meet it. Because I think we can say that because that's the law of physics. It's the way things work.

[40:29]

But hasn't this... We just haven't seen it yet, that's all. It hasn't gotten bad enough. It hasn't gotten strong enough to bring up that other force in equal strength. In other words, the force of bad, so to speak, don't take it literally, the force of bad hasn't been strong enough to raise enough of a force of good, although that does happen, to be obvious. Yep. But it's bound to happen because every force brings on its opposite. So you're an optimist. I'm neither an optimist or a pessimist. I'm more of a realist. But if you said that the force of... Yeah. Well, okay, just put it the other way around. When the force of good is dominant, then you know the force of evil will meet it. Thank you.

[41:30]

You're just scratching your ear. Okay. The phrase, death stinks, and what that was about... Don't take it literally. What? Don't take it literally. That is literally druid. Well, yeah, I know. That's not what I wanted. But that's simply a subjective understanding. Is that appropriate attitude to, like, you know, this is a highly realized person who said that? Is it? According to Bob. He didn't say it was a highly realized person. Oh, well, somebody who had a deep understanding of that. Yeah, deep understanding. But you are picky. You are being picky. I will retreat now. Well, well.

[42:38]

It's just a turn of phrase. It's not to be taken literally. So, but I want to know, is that... It's not the ideal that we're shooting for in terms of... You don't want to cultivate that. You want to try to accept things, right? Well, I have to explain the meaning of this to you. Although he knows that there's no life and death, at the same time, he realizes that he doesn't like it. Okay? That's what he's saying. That kind of, you know, colloquial way. And he's being compassionate with himself. Yeah. Stinks is just a metaphor for what you don't like. I want to get back to thinking mind and paras and so on.

[43:43]

What just keeps coming up for me is the Sixth Ancestor saying, don't activate thoughts. And I've always thought, it seems to me, my experience is that there seems to be a difference that I can feel in my body. There are times when my brain is just telling me a story. And there are other times when it feels like something, some insight arises organically and feels like it comes from here, not from here. But in some sense, they're both thoughts. The mind follows the feelings. I'm not talking about feelings. The mind follows the intuition. When it's in the service of the hara or no? Well, you know, we get the feeling first, or the intuition first, and then we discriminate it through the mind.

[44:47]

We say, oh, that was a, or this is a. But that's when I'm telling myself a story. That's when I think I'm activating thoughts. But sometimes it doesn't feel, it doesn't feel like there's that mediating process. That's good. Simply experiencing the thing in itself. Right, that's good. I don't want to say good. But that's pure zazen. Pure in the sense that you're not, the intuition is directly touching. And there's no story which is separating or discriminating it. That's good zazen. Without discussing it. You know, you just experience it. And you're not creating a story, because creating the story removes you from it, from the immediacy of, so that bare attention,

[45:49]

bare consciousness, bare awareness. And that's, um, you know, even when thinking arises, just bare awareness of the thinking, without creating a story on it. So, that's what you want. That's nice zazen. To just be, that's called being present with. Just sitting. Just, you know. But then there's also, creating a story is just creating a story. So there's also that. So we have to be very careful, you know, about judgment. When we get lost in the story, then, um,

[46:51]

then you're separate, separated. And it's no longer just. So, to know, this is a story. I'm creating a story. Or there's a story being created by consciousness. About something. So zazen is not about something. Zazen is something. It's it. I like those ice cream bars, you know. It's it. As soon as discrimination starts happening, that's about it. That's different. So, what's precious is it. So try to stay with it. But if you go into about it, don't get judgmental. Just keep coming back to it. Just realize, oh, this is about it. And come back to it. That's all. No judgment. No, oh, I'm bad.

[47:52]

Or, this is wrong. Or, blah, blah, blah. Just, oh, come back. And just stay here. This is the last one. Yeah? Well, it's not too formulated, but I've been thinking. I see things in three, I think. Three? Yeah. Three what? Yes. And I feel that my emotions and my thoughts are entwined

[48:53]

and they are all-consuming. And that third, discerning, or whatever it is. And so I was sitting here thinking, maybe it's like, I was trying to make a positive metaphor to be really impressive. I don't know. But what I ended up thinking was that this entwined thing was like a cable, maybe even a phone cable, that all that you can just throw on the ground. And, you know, maybe it's just a snip of a piece of Pacific Belt entwined phone cable and you can move on. Well, I think in Buddhism, Buddhist practice is when a thought arises to recognize it as a thought. When a feeling arises to acknowledge it as a feeling. When an emotion arises to acknowledge it as an emotion. And that way you have a little distance from it

[49:54]

and you're not necessarily consumed by it. But when you identify too much with your feelings and emotions and thoughts, then it's easy to let them dominate you and be consumed by them. Actually, literally eaten by them. Ah, it's eating me! And we see each other, what's eating away at you? That's an expression, right? What's eating away at you? You have something eating away? Yeah, this emotion, this thought, just eating, eating, eating. You don't have any distance from it. So, we identify egotistically, self-identifies with emotion and thought. And we can't help doing that. But at the same time, we have to have some freedom from it. Can't let yourself, you know,

[50:58]

we can't ignore it, can't ignore them, can't ignore feelings, right? But at the same time, we have to be careful not to be eaten by them. So don't make yourself tasty. Thank you.

[51:18]

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