There's a lot of people here this morning. If it gets a little too warm, we can open up some of these doors for a breeze. Are you comfortable so far? Okay. I'm just curious, how many people, for how many people is this your first time here? Okay, thank you. Well, tomorrow is Labor Day, and this happens to be the hundredth anniversary of Labor Day. Did you know that? The first Labor Day was actually, well, in 1892, a fellow by the name of Peter McGuire, who was a carpenter in New York, decided to organize a parade in honor of labor, and ten

[01:15]

thousand people showed up at the parade, and there was fireworks and a picnic, and two years after that, President Grover Cleveland declared it a national holiday. So in 1894, Labor Day was established, so it's a hundred years. And I've always liked that bumper sticker that says, Honor Labor. Have you seen it? Because it has so many possible meanings. Labor, the word labor means exertion, it actually has, it's exertion and toil and striving, usually for wages, not for profit. And there's a connotation of difficulty, labor, carrying a heavy weight and toiling under

[02:24]

that. It also means the childbirth, the pains or contractions or the whole process of childbirth is called labor as well. So it's work, but work of a particular kind. Now the word work itself and the word that we use in Zen for work or temple work is different than the usual, the word in Japanese for work and the word for the work you do in the temple are two different words. Work is shigoto, I believe, and temple work is samu, which samu is actually zazen in action. So in Zen work has been, there's a place for work as part of the practice and it's honored.

[03:34]

There's an old saying, a day of no work is a day of no eating, as part of the spirit of being in the monastery, in the community. So that spirit of work, samu or temple work or zazen in action is a little bit different feeling than labor or toiling for wages. But the word work, the etymology of the word work gets a little bit closer to this idea of samu. The word work, the root of it is to make and it's associated with, in Greek, a word that means energy or liturgy. So those are associated and also in Latin, a word for tool or organ or secret rites or

[04:38]

worship. And this root also is the word rite, the old English is w-r-h-y-t-a, something like that, which is like rite or wheel, like a wheel rite, wheel rite center, which we have, is the person who made the wheels was the wheel rite. So that's the maker of the wheels and that root is associated with worship. So I thought that was pretty interesting. To me, worship means worth plus ship and to worship is to love and have allegiance towards some sacred object or figure or deity or energy and the various ceremonies and rituals

[05:39]

that express that love and reverence are worship. So I feel like samu is closer to this kind of worship or expressing our love for our life and for each other and expressing it through this kind of activity, work, samu. So, we finished a seven day intensive sitting at the beginning of August and on the first day of that seven days, the Reb Anderson, the abbot who was leading the sasheen, asked us if we were ready or how we felt about making a vow to be present for the next seven days and he didn't say make the vow and it was more a discussion.

[06:46]

What about that? What about looking at these next seven days and having an aspiration and a vow to be present for seven days? And I remember someone in the back of the room raised their hand and said, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it because I know there's going to be a lot of pain and I don't want to be present for it, for all that pain. Which I thought was very honest, actually, very honest response and I took a look at that because I thought, I remember thinking, well I've already made that vow, I've made it plenty of times, I'm, you know, I'm just Miss Present of 1994, but then the more I reflected on it, I realized it doesn't matter if you've said once or understand intellectually

[07:51]

it's a good idea to be present and yeah, I think I'll be present, you actually, there's some effort involved in being present. I was looking at some old notebooks that I had of thoughts, you know, admonitions and inspirational thoughts and I found one from 1978 and it said, Cultivate Alertness, so a little note to myself. That was a number of years ago and it doesn't matter if you make some decision at some point, it causes and conditions in the world, in the universe, do not necessarily help you to keep this vow of being present, there's lots of distractions and lots of things that draw you away. So to make a vow to be present takes effort, it takes effort actually moment after moment,

[08:51]

you can't do it kind of once and for all, it's something that has to arise over and over again. To be alert and to be present takes effort. I recently came back from a vacation where we rented some movies and we saw the movie The Seventh Samurai, which I had seen a long time ago, but one of the scenes in The Seventh Samurai, do you know the story of The Seventh Samurai? It's the same as The Magnificent Seven, there's a town of farmers who are being attacked by brigands and they go and ask for help, they hire a samurai to help and they retrieve them one by one, they start with one who's the leader and then he looks around for the other six and he tests these various samurai that he sees walking about and one of the ways he tests them is he sends a messenger and says, come and see me where I am, come

[09:54]

and talk with me and then he has someone hiding behind the door so that when they walk in the door there's someone with a big stick ready to bop them over the head as they come in and the first samurai they asked to come in in that way immediately grabbed the stick and threw the guy over and said, what's going on here, what are you trying to do? Very fast, immediate, he was in no danger, the next fellow who came didn't even step through the threshold, he saw the shadow of the guy waiting behind the door right in the doorway and stopped and said, is this some kind of a joke or what's happening? Completely alert to what was about to befall him. This reminded me of a time when I was in college, I had a friend who was practicing Zen and must have seen this movie because they said, would you attack me, you know, without me knowing it, you know, we were on campus together and they wanted me to kind of jump out from

[10:59]

behind doorways and so he could test his alertness and I didn't do it. So, alertness and presence takes a kind of effort. Now, in Buddhism there's something called the six perfections and the first of those is giving, the second is morality or ethics, the third is patience and the fourth is something called joyous effort, which I want to talk about. The perfection of joyous effort, it's also sometimes translated as vigor or strenuousness but I actually like joyous effort the best. So joyous effort is the mind that turns towards wholesomeness and virtue. So it has a lot to do with what the motivation of your mind is, what are your intentions

[12:06]

and aspirations, almost more than the actions themselves. You can't necessarily tell by an action what the motivation is. So the motivation for wholesomeness and virtues is joyous effort and just to say some more about joyous effort, there's four types of joyous effort. The first is called putting on the armor and it's kind of a militaristic term but the bodhisattva, which is the being who vows to hold off their own enlightenment until everyone else has been enlightened, puts on the armor of this vow to save all beings and not abandon beings. So it's a kind of armor, figuratively speaking, that you put on. And same with joyous effort, you put on this armor of not having discouraging thoughts

[13:11]

but to just put out this effort over and over again, thinking of it as a kind of armor that you wear that keeps yourself generating encouraging words and allows you to be forceful in your exertion, which is the second kind of joyous effort, where in every moment you find the forcefulness and the energy to exert yourself. And the third type of joyous effort is firmness like a mountain. So over time, to continue this practice, over time you need a kind of firmness like this posture, cross-legged posture, stable and firm so you can continue. And the last is non-complacency, which is looking at your life and not feeling necessarily satisfied like you've done, you're done, you've made your vow to be present and so now you

[14:15]

can go on and do something else. Actually feeling not so satisfied, which also keeps your effort going, non-complacency. Now one of the main opponents to joyous effort, to this perfection of joyous effort, is laziness. And laziness does not have the kind of moral overtones that I think we have in our society, you know, a lazy bones, it's almost someone who's morally corrupt or something. But in Buddhism it's just one of the afflictions, one of the many afflictions or negative states of mind that come up is laziness. And laziness is a mind that turns away from wholesomeness, it turns away from virtuous actions and turns towards unwholesomeness.

[15:18]

So even if you possess wonderful, marvelous, good qualities of generosity and all sorts of things, if you have laziness it actually makes it very difficult to practice and to accomplish your way and to accomplish your joyous effort. Now laziness personally is a difficulty. So this whole lecture can be, I can think of it as encouraging words for me. Laziness also comes in three types and the first is indolence, which is, actually the word itself means in or not and dolore or pain, not wanting to have any pain. That's the kind of root of it, which reminds me of that fellow who honestly said, I don't

[16:24]

want to be present because it's going to be too painful. So indolence is turning away from these situations that might cause pain or give pain and indolence actually, the way we use it is a habitual disinterest or not wanting to do work habitually. So it's also attachment to sleep and dreaminess, daydreaming, especially attachment to sleep, which can be a real problem, really enjoying the pleasures of sleep and dreaminess. For me, I can sleep forever, it feels like, and every morning that my alarm clock rings is difficult, sleeping through my alarm clock is not difficult. So, maybe some of you have this kind of problem too, of really being inclined towards sleepiness

[17:36]

and inactivity, actually liking inactivity, sort of the couch potato type and it's not, I'm not putting any moral judgment on it, it's a tendency some people have, other people have other tendencies like inclinations towards excitement and excitedness and restlessness, but this particular one, affliction, I certainly have. And the second type of laziness, which we often don't think of as a kind of laziness, that's why it's interesting that it's called laziness, is attachment to worldly affairs or unwholesome actions, not that worldly affairs are necessarily unwholesome, it also goes back to your motivation. So, turning away from one's practice or cultivation of the way and being, well the list in what

[18:42]

I was studying listed smoking and drinking and these kinds of things, but also interested in warfare and certain activities that really draw you away and divert your attentions, not that these things in some instances are not for the benefit of others, but in many cases it's a kind of laziness not wanting to turn towards wholesome activities. And the third kind of laziness is called discouragement, and this laziness includes a mind that's constantly saying, I don't have the capacity to practice, I'm not good enough really, I might as well just give it all up, that kind of mind that has this repetition of these kinds of thoughts, looking at this from a Buddhist standpoint, is laziness.

[19:42]

So, there are ways to deal with these kinds of laziness, lazinesses, that will help you to dispel them. There's a story about Suzuki Roshi who also, I guess, had trouble getting up, turns out, getting up in the morning, it's hard to believe. The story is that when he heard his alarm clock or the wake-up bell, wake-up bell is rung throughout the monastery or throughout Green Gulch in the morning, his practice was to just get up, get up and get into the bathroom, get dressed, you know, washed up and go to the zendo. And there's a story that in Tassajara one summer, his cabin was changed from one cabin to another, and the arrangement of the room was a little bit different, and the next morning the wake-up bell rang, he got up and ran straight smack-dab into the wall, which had been in his other cabin where the bathroom door had been. But this kind of activity, this kind of spirit

[20:52]

is joyous effort, you know, and it dispels any kind of laziness. Now, I don't want to there's another type, you know, the snooze alarm, you know, give it a little hit, get another extra five, can I make it? This tends towards a kind of laziness and there are ways to dispel laziness that nobody wants to hear about, but I'm going to tell you anyway. Because I vow to hear about them myself. The main thing that will help you to dispel this laziness, which is an opponent to joyous effort, and without joyous effort it's very difficult

[21:54]

to practice actually. So, first of all, you have to bring up to mind, you have to bring to mind and go over what the faults are of laziness. You know, if you don't see any reason not to be lazy, it's kind of hard to practice these things. So, you bring to mind what the faults are. And the main things that help you with this are to bring to mind impermanence and the fact of your own death, the fact that death is right there. So, impermanence is the fact of life that all things change, there's nothing to be gotten a hold of, and time, you don't have all the time in the world. And it goes very nicely with the fact of death. The meditation on death is a universal meditation that's appropriate for everyone. And there's

[23:01]

certain phrases you can say such as, death will come, the life force will be cut off. And there's an 8th century poet named Shantideva who goes into this fervently in depth where he talks about the Lord of Death doesn't wait, doesn't care whether you've sort of got some projects going that you haven't quite finished or have some things you haven't attended to or that you haven't really taken the time to cultivate the way and to practice. You are going to wait until certain things were finished and taken care of, until the kids went to college or until you got a better job or whatever you've won, whatever I've put off until the next day, the Lord of Death doesn't really care about that at all. It says, come on, we're going. And at that point, if you feel like, well, at that point I'll throw off my laziness and really make joyous effort to be present and to be alert, and

[24:07]

it's too late and you may not have the energy, you may not have the physical capabilities, the changes may be going so fast that there's no chance. So these kinds of meditations really are very useful to dispel, to shake off the kind of lassitude and indolence that we may have. Lassitude is an interesting word. It means also this disinclination to work and tiredness and weariness comes from the root that means tired and weary, and the word alas, alas, I can't do it, alas and alack. It's interesting to think of that as a kind of laziness rather than woe or that this is a state of mind, this doesn't have to do with necessarily your conditions. You can change by your own state of mind, by your ability

[25:13]

to bring forth joyous effort. We all have this ability. So we don't like to think about these things, and yet the sureness of impermanence and death are undeniable, and they can help you. And joyous effort is joyous. To have these opponents be dispelled and allow you to practice joyous effort is joyful. And so it's for your benefit, actually. These things are for your benefit, and my benefit. So it's helpful to, it's not like, oh darn it, I've got to get up. That state of mind is one of these lazinesses. This is like the indolence or discouragement. So the bodhisattva, the enlightenment being, practices these perfections

[26:28]

and the perfection of joyous effort. Now I have a story that illustrates this that I wanted to read. Maybe I won't read the whole thing. How are we doing here? This is a story, maybe a lot of you know this story already. This is called The Little Engine That Could. Do you know that story? Now, this story was written in 1930. The first printing was 1930, so it's really old. What are we, 94? It's an old story, and it has some rhetoric that I actually kind of choke on, which you might also, about good little boys and girls mostly. But it actually illustrates very beautifully this bodhisattva state of mind that can throw off laziness. Do you remember this story? How many of you had this story read to you

[27:29]

millions of times? Okay. Well, for those of you who don't know the story, it's about an engine that was traveling along. I'll show you the pictures. That was puffing and chugging along, carrying this, many different cars filled with dolls and toys and good things to eat for little boys and girls, lots of stuffed animals and milk and oranges and apples and lollipops for dessert. And it was trying to get over the mountain down to the valley, had to go over this big mountain down to the valley before the children woke up in the morning. Well, what happens is the engine just kind of dies on the track, and it tries, it tries and tries, but it won't go another inch. So there they are, stuck kind of down on the bottom of the mountain. So the clown, who's one of the main protagonists of the story, gets out and says, well, you know, let's not worry. Here comes a shiny new engine,

[28:32]

said the funny little clown. Let's ask him to help us. So he waves down the shiny new engine, which is that yellow one, and the shiny new engine comes to a halt, and they say, please, shiny new engine, won't you pull our train over the mountain? Our engine has broken down, and the boys and girls on the other side won't have any toys to play with or good food to eat unless you help us. Now, it's a big engine, the shiny new engine, and this is what the shiny new engine says. He snorts. I pull you? I'm a passenger engine. I've just carried a fine, big train over the mountain with more cars than you ever dreamed of. My train had sleeping cars with comfortable berths, a dining car where waiters bring whatever hungry people want to eat, and so on and so forth. I pull the likes of you? Indeed not. Now, when I was a kid, I thought it was just mean, you know. I thought it was just kind of a mean fellow, but actually now that I look at it, it's just laziness, you know.

[29:38]

This guy could have pulled it very easily, but it's the kind of laziness that's attached to kind of worldly, unwholesome ideas. Power, I've got, you know, dining cars, parlor cars where people sit in soft armchairs, you know. I don't have to bother with you. This is puffed up and laziness, you know. It has nothing to do with joyous effort. So that's the first kind of laziness very nicely illustrated by the shiny new engine. So then the train is very sad. The dolls and toys are sad, but the little clown who has unending rising up of spirit, he says, passenger engine is not the only engine in the world. Here comes a great big strong one. Let's ask him to help us. So he waves the flag again. Please, oh please big engine called all the dolls and toys, won't you please pull our train over the mountain? This is this one here. And they ask again. And the big strong engine bellowed.

[30:45]

I am a freight engine. I have just pulled a big train loaded with big machines over the mountain. These machines print books and newspapers for grownups to read. I am a very important engine indeed. I won't pull the likes of you. And he also puffed up off to the roundhouse. So same kind of thing. I could have done it very easily. Big strong, just pulled a big freight train with heavy machinery, but just didn't want to be bothered and also was attached to power and fame. So the clown says, cheer up. He's ready to go again. Here comes another one. He looks very old and tired, but our train is so little, perhaps he can help us. They just have a very small train. Here comes this other one. This is the old one. And the train comes to a stop and they ask again, please kind engine it's over. Now this one sighs. This is another kind of laziness. I am so tired. I must rest by wearing wheels. I cannot pull even so little the train as yours over the mountain. I cannot,

[31:50]

I cannot, I cannot. So here's this old engine that was a good size engine, but, and their train is very small, but you know, he's got, this is discouragement, both the laziness of discouragement. I can't do it. I don't have the capacity, the mind, you know, I cannot, I cannot. That's the internal message. And, and also wanting to go and rest and sleep. So I think maybe a little bit attached to sleep, but I'm not sure. He did say he was so tired. He might've been tired, but anyway, I think mostly discouraged. I don't have the capacity. I can't do this, you know? So off he went saying, I cannot, I cannot, I cannot. Well, then they were all really sad, but the clown with a resurgence of, you know, the resurgence of hope says, here's another engine, a little blue engine, a very little one. Maybe

[32:53]

she will help us. Happens to be a woman, but you know. So the very little engine comes chug, chug, chugging merrily along. She sees the clown's flag. She stops immediately. The other ones, they had to kind of get out there. Hey, stop, stop. We got to talk. Stops immediately. This is the Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva speaks first. She says right away, they don't have to say, please, kind engine. She says right away, what is the matter, my friends? A Bodhisattva always speaks first, sees the problem, is alert, present, goes forward. They say, oh, little blue engine, will you pull us over the mountain, the good little boys and girls and so forth and so forth. Please, please help us. Well, first she kind of looks at her capacity and gives a realistic appraisal. I'm not very big, said the little blue engine.

[33:55]

They use me only for switching trays in the yard. I have never been over the mountain. So she said, can I do this or can't I, you know? But they urge her, we must get over the mountain. The very little engine looked up, saw the tears in the doll's eyes and thought of the children. And then she said, I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. And she hitched herself to the little train, joyous effort here, no laziness, ready to go. She tugged and pulled and pulled and tugged and slowly, slowly, slowly they started off. The toy clown jumped aboard and all the dolls and the toy animals began to smile and cheer. Puff, puff, chug, chug, went the little blue engine. I think I can. [...] Up, up, up, faster and faster and faster and faster the little engine climbed until at last they

[34:56]

reached the top of the mountain. Down in the valley lay the city. Hooray, hooray, cried the funny little clown. And all the dolls and toys, the good little boys and girls in the town will be happy because you helped us, kind little blue engine. And the little blue engine smiled and seemed to say as she puffed steadily down the mountain, I thought I could. [...] So, um, that, um, I really do feel that brings it home. You know, it's, it's a state of mind that one has, uh, that really makes all the difference. What one's motivation and intention is. Now, I want to make something very clear because there's a possible misunderstanding that can happen around joyous effort and laziness, whereby one thinks that it's got to be this, um, nonstop

[36:02]

putting out steam and on and on. And, um, and it, you think about that and your mind kind of withers, you know, your thoughts like, I can't, you really say, I can't do this. I wish I'd never heard about Zen if this is what I've got to do. But there's actually it's, first of all, it's not a moralistic thing. It has nothing to do with, um, moralism. It has to do with negative states of mind. Now, one thing we can't do is mistake laziness and rest. So, uh, in practicing joyous effort, there are, um, four powers that are necessary to have. One is aspiration, which I've been talking about, which is this intention. Um, aspiration, um, um, I'll skip that one. Joy. And the fourth is rest. Now rest, um, is very

[37:05]

important for joyous effort. You make joyous effort and then you take a break. We actually have in our schedule, like for Sashin, we have breaks after every meal, longer breaks, and you are encouraged to take a break. Now I know that there are some people who sit through their breaks and I remember this at Tassajara. They would say, well, I'm going to, after a meal, well, I'm going right back. Are you, you know, thinking, you know, taking the moral high ground, supposedly, I'm going to sit every minute of the day. But the schedule says take a break and you, you relax, take a break, rest, have a cup of tea, and then you can go back with renewed effort, renewed joyous effort. If you don't rest, um, you, you really run yourself into the ground. So we have to rest and that the yearly schedule at Tassajara, the yearly schedule at Green Gulch includes interim. Today's the first day of our regular schedule. We've just had a couple of weeks of interim where we get up a little later, we have a little more sleep, a little less intense, um, schedule.

[38:08]

This is all in order to allow people to relax and then renew their efforts so they can really have joyous effort and not, um, unrealistically, um, uh, act in such a way that you dissipate your strength. So laziness, laziness and rest are very different things. Rest is for the power of joyous effort. It supports it. It's necessary. Laziness is the opponent. I just wanted to make that clear so that, um, there's no misunderstanding. Okay, thank you very much. So all six are giving, morality, patience, joyous effort, concentration and wisdom.

[39:32]

The last one? Wisdom. I'd like to know about the last one. Perfection of wisdom? Yeah, how do I get it? Well, the perfection of wisdom, the perfection of wisdom and how do you get it? Um, one thing about the perfection of wisdom is that it is ungettable. I mean, that's part of, that's part of the, it's very elusive. You cannot get it in the way we understand reaching out and getting something and having it. So, um, the prashna paramita, which is the perfection of wisdom, there's an entire, um, you know, body of literature and sutras

[40:39]

and so forth that talk about this teaching over and over and over again at, in different ways to try and impart what this wisdom is. And I think the main thing, um, and actually there's admonitions about not talking about it because it's, they say it's difficult to understand. You know, this is actually, and when you hear it and don't understand it, you may be, um, this isn't a put down at all, but this is what the sutras say. You may tremble and be cowed and, um, fearful and so forth because the teaching is the teaching of emptiness or shunyata, which is the non-inherent existence of, um, phenomena. So, so the, the perfection of wisdom is this knowledge that there is nothing that is inherently existence and at the same

[41:43]

time there is the appearance of phenomena. And so we have compassion for the suffering we see and the beings that we see who are suffering. And we also know through our own realization that there actually isn't anyone there in the way we usually think right now. So those two things, it's the merging of those two things is the prashna paramita is the perfection of wisdom. And it's, um, the Heart Sutra is the perfection of wisdom, the essence of the perfection of wisdom that we chant. So how do you get it? Um, I think, um, that you have to examine the mind that wants to get anything that sees things outside itself as separate from and wants to get those. Looking at that mind, which is a mind of delusion and,

[42:47]

and studying that. How about that? That's pretty good. The prashna paramita, by the way, is, is, um, when personified is female, um, that's a Tara there. We don't, we don't actually have a drawing, but, um, recently at the Brundage Museum, there was a prashna paramita. It was about two years ago, maybe there was a, I can't remember what the show was, but there was an almost life-size figure of prashna paramita in full lotus, extremely beautiful. She's on the cover of a book called, uh, The Mother of the Buddhas by Lex Hickson. They, they have a photograph of that figure and she sits and on her, let's see, it's her left side is a, is a book, which is the, the prashna paramita sutras themselves. So in the carving, it's a stone figure. There's the literature itself. The prashna paramita sutras are in there.

[43:50]

Who was the author of that book? Um, a man by the name of Lex, L-E-X Hickson, I believe, Lex Hickson. Is this what you teach Tuesday nights? Well, um, if people sign up, we'll, we're going to have, we're going to talk about the earliest of the prashna paramita texts, which is a verse summary and a sutra in 8,000 lines, they call them. It's a 32-syllable line, anyway, but in English translation. So we're going to look at that, study it. But I'm not sure the class is going to be a go because not enough people have signed up so far. So if you're pre-registered, um, do sign up, do pre-register because, um, it's helpful for the instructor to know whether it's going to be a go or not because you're, one prepares and then nothing happens. So I think there's one person who's signed up so far on the list. So you signed up. Okay. So

[44:52]

there's more people I guess. Prashna paramita. Yes. I just saw a card for sale in the bookstore that I thought you might comment on in light of what your lecture was today. It said something like, um, laziness, uh, it's lucky someone does it. Sort of like it's a tough job, but someone's willing to do it because industrious people bring us industry. Lazy people bring us civilization. Well, I think, you know, it's, it's how you use the word. I mean, I would, there's also this, um, study I read about, um, hunting and gathering people and they, um, do lots of napping. You know, they nap, long naps during the day and, and they create things. Their days are spent in this kind

[45:54]

of relaxed, um, you know, someone might say, well, they're lazy, but they, um, rest. They have a certain amount of rest incorporated into the daily routine. And, um, so I don't know if I'd call that laziness in the way that it's being defined, but I liked that card. Somebody's got to do it. It's right. Is that a Gary Larson thing or is it? One word that I can think of is moroseness, which to me, I'm not sure I know it right, but it implies something emotional that it's not necessarily laziness, but maybe a little bit of depression involved, but the two seem to be sort of wound up together or something. It's like, uh, sort of an inability to come forward because the certain is laziness and an unwillingness to break through that, sort of a holding back with

[47:03]

some kind of an excuse rather than just be fully and joyously present for whatever comes. So what you were saying awakened certain ideas in me that I hadn't thought of. Yes. You know, I really felt I had to be careful in this lecture to not, you know, there's a tendency to take something like this and then to use it, you know, in a moralistic beat yourself, you know, one more, one more handy club. Oh no, I'm not, I'm not depressed. And you know, it's, it's just laziness. You know, I could imagine how one could use it that way. So I did want to be careful to not give it a kind of tone that way. And at the same time, you know, if it does hit the mark, if you do say, Hey, you know, that actually is an aspect I haven't looked at, um, to kind of open it up. But this is not to say

[48:07]

that someone can't be sad or clinically depressed or, uh, you know, all sorts of States that we get into, um, anger sometimes, you know, and resentfulness and stubbornness can look a certain way too. So it's really talking about a particular, really a particular state and it's, you know, some aspects about it. Also, there's the element that, um, if you want to sort of do something about it and sort of, you know, enthusiastic there in this, I, I saw that a lot in, um, old America when I came here many, many years ago, I was associated with a Protestant church that helped me come here. And I can think of at least one person that was, her eyes were brightening. And there was a sort of, now this is going to sound like a value of judgment and it is,

[49:14]

there was kind of a puritanical streak to it. Like, like it's immoral not to be unlazy. You know, there was some, at least that's how I vaguely felt. So it is sort of difficult to know when you're approaching that puritanical, um, impulse in yourself, in me, I have a lot of puritanical self-browning and so on. And, um, this other energy that you're talking about, which actually I was speaking briefly to Lee outside, and he said it's more like an allowing of an energy to come through instead of pushing or something like that. So it's, it's kind of, because nothing has a definite solution or you can't say, well, from now on, I'm going to come forward. Yes. And I'm

[50:18]

going to be enthusiastically present. I wish it could be that way, that there is something to it. It's sort of elusive, but it's certainly tantalizing. I think that energy that you spoke of that's, we can call puritanical or kind of self-righteous, you know, where someone takes the moral high ground, um, this is kind of my phrase I've been using today. Um, there's a kind of, um, burnout is associated with that. Sometimes, you know, it's like you can go that way so long and it's a kind of, um, a lot of stuff goes out, out, out and leaks out energy and ideas. And then you get angry at the people, you know, because they're not, you know, putting out enough effort or, you know, all sorts of stuff come up with self-righteousness and, uh, kind of this furious do-gooder activity. And I'm not saying everybody who does good works is in that category, but I

[51:21]

think you all know the kind of people I'm talking about. And there's often lots of other things involved in that kind of energy, which is a kind of laziness. That's the laziness. Oddly enough, that second type, which is attached to worldly actions and unwholesome actions, where you're doing these activities, um, for fame and gain or for all sorts of ideas. So we look at these people, we say, oh, there's joyous effort, or we might, we might be fooled, and yet it's not. It's, it's, it's thin, you know. Joyous effort is kind of a deep wellspring, you know. So it's, it's really, you know, in negotiating, we can find ourselves going off into, well, I'm getting up every morning, where's the rest of them, you know? I remember Kadagiri Roshi, um, I went to visit him. He passed away a number of years ago. He had been teaching at Zen Center under Suzuki Roshi, and then he started his own

[52:26]

temple in Minneapolis, and Minneapolis was not really like the Bay Area in that, you know, lots and lots of people are interested in Buddhism and all different schools and so forth. So there's a small group, and we went there, and there was maybe two people in the Zendo, um, and us. We had come from San Francisco, two of us, and he just came in, he did his bows, he sat, he did service, full service, and I had the feeling that this was not, this was not in order to have a big group, you know, going and be the head honcho somewhere. This was his effort that just, it was just going on like a stream, unsullied. If you're there, you're there. If you're not, you're not. This was his practice, and it was so inspiring, because it felt so, well you understand why it was inspiring, but I felt, you know, I reflected back on my own small-mindedness, you know, and looking around who's there and who

[53:31]

isn't, or you just do your practice, and you don't look around, you know. And there was one other thing I was going to say about that. Anyway, go ahead. You just reminded me of an image of work that's been really helpful and meaningful for me, from a film about Mother Teresa, and in the bigger context, she's gone into a ceasefire in Lebanon, and she's focused on one orphanage for disabled children, and that's all she's going to do is help those kids in that orphanage. And of course, the whole war is going on around them, but there's one shot of her standing at a tap that has almost no water coming out of it, and holding a water bottle, and the voiceover, and her voice says something like, small actions undertaken with great love. So it's like, you know, this famous woman who could, you know, people would give her millions of dollars if she asked, is standing there doing

[54:35]

this very simple thing. And I find that really, it's very meaningful to me, because it takes away all of the, my grandiosity about having a big effect, and that's the other trains in the earlier part of the story. You want to have a big effect on things. I read Anderson a couple of weeks ago, used the phrase, leaning into the vacuuming, to get that vacuuming really good. Don't lean forward, and don't lean back. So there's a way to not muscle it. This past week, I was on vacation for a week, and there was a talent show here, which I missed, but I heard that, did some of you go to, I know some of the residents were there, but I heard that Wendy Johnson, who a lot of you know, she was head of the garden for years, did a kind of monologue that reminded me of this, where she did out loud her internal voice, and she was, gotta get this

[55:36]

hoeing out, I'm gonna hoe faster than Sonia, I can hoe faster, move over there, right? Is that kind of what it was? And this internal dialogue, doing, you know, we're hoeing out in the morning, communal work, samu, right? We do it instead of second period zazen, we all go down to the fields, and this Wendy's letting it out, what goes on, you know, as everybody's working away. Leaning into your hoe, I guess. Yes? Can you say something about getting from the step where the, and I mean this both literally and figuratively, but getting from the step where the alarm goes off, and you reach over and push the snooze, and then push it again, to the joyous effort, or you just zoom up and, you know, hit the wall? Well, it is effort. I think that's the point. It's not that, unless you're the type who wakes up

[56:43]

easily as a morning person, there's somebody here who gets up at 2.30 or 3, they go to bed early, but they're a morning person, they do some studying, and then, you know, they get ready and they go to zazen for the five o'clock period, but they've been up for hours, no problem. So it's not talking about that person, but where it is effort, you know, and you have to, you have to help yourself, you have to bring up why it is you have to review, why it is you want to do this practice, you have to, you know, there's some of the things to break up the one about being the laziness of discouragement, is you review that those in the past were people just like me, the buddhas and ancestors of the past who who had realization of their true nature, were people just like me. I am no different from they are, I am no different from they, from them, and those in the past are just the same as I am, I am

[57:47]

the same as they are, and I have to do put effort, you know, you have to, it's not unless you're that morning type, it's not you, it's every morning the alarm goes and you, I, in Tassajara what I was doing, because I do have trouble getting up, the alarm would go and as soon as it went, I would put my hands in Gassho, which would be in some strange position wherever I was, because that would remind me, you know, that I want to get up for Zazen, and I'd sort of, if I could keep them in Gassho, it's like I could kind of come forward, you know, I know somebody else who offered incense first thing from their bed, had a little, it would offer and, you know, the smell of the incense, it was like they remind themselves, this is what I want to do, but that's the effort, you know, so you, I think one first has to decide what they want to do, what is their intention, clarify that, and then do what you can to help yourself through internally stating your aspiration,

[58:53]

you know, making your vow, and then maybe there is some trick like, like putting your alarm clock, I know someone else put their alarm clock at the other side of the room, so they had to get up to go, I guess. I have to say, when I heard you say that, it felt somewhat like chalk on a blackboard inside. Which thing? About the rising, it brought back that, for my mother, rising shine, and I guess what's happened is that I've learned to value that time of the snooze, and the waiting, because it seems like it's closest to true nature, and I actually set my alarm ahead so that I can have two periods of that before I have to get up. It is such rich, such a rich

[59:57]

experience, and it just feels so mechanical to hear the alarm jump up and get up and go. Well, you know, what I'm talking about is giving examples of upaya or skill in means, so I'm telling you what worked for one person, Suzuki Roshi, or what worked for somebody at Tassajar, what worked for me, and what works for you, and it's finding what works for you is what we're talking about. There's not like the right way to do it is get up when you hear the alarm necessarily. If you want to get to the zendo, and that time is very important, like you want to write your dreams down, you need, you know, you want to have some time to be in that half state there, then you set your alarm 50 minutes earlier, half an hour earlier, so this is not proscriptions or formulas. It's each one of you can be thinking, what is it that would help

[60:58]

me to do what I have aspired to do, what I have vowed to do, and it may be one thing or another for each person, so don't misunderstand the anecdotes. Mistake them for the, you know, the law of the land or something. Let me just move my head because I'm kind of caught over here. Go ahead. You know, there's been a study made that some children need more time to adjust to the vertical position rather than the horizontal because of chemical imbalance. Maybe that will help us, and besides being enthusiastic about life and living and giving up a lot or being depressed, I think that's a good phenomenon for a lot of us. So, yes, just a little time to get adjusted. Yes, so each person, you have to really study yourself, which is the study of Buddhism. You study yourself, what works for you, what, but it's the idea that I can't do this. This is,

[61:58]

you know, that mind. The Buddha, it's heretical besides, you know, because the Buddha actually says, I mean, there's this quote I read today, a gnat, a fly, or any being with consciousness can develop, you know, so why are you saying I can't do it? You know, it's really, it's very self-defeating, and besides that, it's, what did the thing say? It said, the Buddha who never spoke falsely said, you know, this is kind of an encouragement, but yes, each person, somebody I know gets up and faints if they get up, or gets up, if they get off their Zalpha too fast, they faint, so you have to know who you are. Yes? It's almost always a bad idea to just grab one word out of context and ask about that question anyway, and that is what you were talking about, the attributes of laziness. Yes. And one sort of laziness included is addiction to warfare,

[63:03]

and I can see how addiction to warfare is maybe a very good idea at all, but I somehow don't get how this is laziness. Please elaborate for me. Okay. Based on the definition of laziness as turning away from the wholesome and virtuous action, whatever, whatever it may be, for me it's kind of catalog mind, you know, it's like looking at the Vermont Country Store catalog again, you know, after, I mean, you know, that kind of, yeah. It's a certain, it's, I don't know what it is, but, so warfare is just one example of something one might be attached to, and perhaps because it's harder to live peacefully anyway. Because it's what? Perhaps because it's more difficult to live peacefully. Yeah. Or, you know, the taking up wholesome actions or ignorance, you know, these things

[64:08]

are all based on laziness is a subsidiary emotional affliction. It's not one of the main ones and it stems out of ignorance. So there's a whole bunch of them like wrath and jealousy and laziness is one of these. And if you go back further, it just comes out of ignorance, basically. Ignorance, greed, hate and delusion, ignorance, these states come out of that. So if you're, if you're aware of what is wholesome activity and know it, then you would choose that because unwholesome activity actually is detrimental to yourself and others, one would think. But through ignorance, which is aversion or averting from or turning away from, we go to these other things. And, you know, in some ways, it's like, it's all almost, you could say it's all ignorance. We're just turning it around, taking a look at it from this particular aspect

[65:08]

that we're calling laziness, for the sake of shining some flashlights into some corners we might not have looked at before. But what I found so interesting was the one that we often call activity and effortful stuff, they were calling laziness, because it was turning away from wholesome, doesn't matter how much activity you're generating, or how many, how much you're running around. If it's turning away from wholesomeness, they're saying it's laziness. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you for your talk this morning. It was really useful and so pertinent for me, because this morning, I had to make a decision, was I going to get up and come here? And last week, I made the decision to sleep, because I really was exhausted. And this morning, I was paying attention. I thought, well, I haven't rested enough, I can come. So it was really good to do that. And also how laziness can be applied to negative thought processes, as opposed to

[66:15]

positive ones. And that can be a form of laziness to indulge in negative thought processes. And that's an important thing to remember. And I also wanted to ask, I'm new to Buddhism, and what it all entails, what the relationship is between one and the statues, you know, the 3D statues. I don't know quite how to relate to the physical statue. Is it just to remember that statue, or know about that statue? And I thought you might be able to share with me. Our relationship to these figures, practice figures, you might call them, is, you know, it runs the gamut. I think many of us grew up in a tradition where one of the Ten Commandments was, thou shalt have no other gods before ye,

[67:18]

and graven images, and that whole realm was verboten, was taboo, was the worst, you know. So there's that, that we bring from Judeo side of the Judeo-Christian. Then, I guess, people who were brought up in Catholicism are used to figures, and relating to figures, and have a sense of kind of what one might, how one might relate. And then there's other people who, you know, figures, or there might have been one figure, but that was about it, you know. So there's quite a range. And it's very scary, you know, because we bow in the direction of these particular figures. So, uh-oh, what am I bowing down to? And now what's going to happen? And I don't believe in this. So this is, I think, has been a perennial problem for many people. So my understanding, and my, um, do you know what the figures are that are in this endo? Do you know?

[68:20]

Not too much. Okay. Vague feeling about it. Yeah. Well, I'd be interested to know what your vague feeling was without even knowing. Would you reveal? Oh, you don't have to reveal. Okay, if you don't want to. So on the main altar, we have the big full-size, more than full-size, seated figure with the, um, holding the staff, which is Manjushri, which is the Bodhisattva, this enlightenment being of wisdom. And it's traditional to have it in the zendo. He, he, in this case, the wisdom, Prajnaparamita's wisdom, female personification. And this is male, and he usually carries a sword, which cuts through delusion. And that's an appropriate symbol to have in the zendo. Now, our zendo is also a buddha hall, meaning in a traditional temple. And at Zen Center in San Francisco, there's a zendo where he sits down, and then there's a buddha hall where you do ceremonies and lecture and, uh, services. And that's a

[69:23]

little more frilly. You know, you have, the zendo usually doesn't have flowers. It has just greenery on the altar, kind of subdued, um, not too much color for, because of distraction and so forth. It's pretty simple. But this is a combo. So we've got the zendo and buddha hall together, and we have big flower arrangement, right? And we also have Shakyamuni Buddha, who's, was given to us by the association, um, that was founded to promote Alan Watts's teachings, um, Society for the, I can't remember right now, philosophy is in the word. Anyway, they gave us that Shakyamuni Buddha touching the earth, um, figure. So that's, was placed, it sits right in front of Manjushri. So you have wisdom, then you have the, the, the historical Buddha who brought forth the teaching. And then opposite them, on the other side, where, where the lecturer sits is, on this side is the figure of Jizo, who is the figure personifying compassion.

[70:29]

And that figure is a very, it's almost androgynous, but it is male. And the story about that is, um, it was a woman who made very strong vows to save all beings, who then was, became Jizo, became a male, this male form later on in her rebirth, right? Um, so the Jizo figure is the compassion figure. So those are the figures. And one can relate to them as the way I like to talk about it, as one's own energy that you already have of wisdom, compassion, and wisdom. And, uh, effort, actually, the Buddha's, um, sitting there and vowing to sit. You can say, this is a way that these are brought forth for me to relate to in a certain way. And so when you bow, in some ways, you're bowing to your own self, your own enlightenment,

[71:30]

your own wisdom, your own compassion. And thinking of them as other than you might not be so helpful. Thinking of them as what you can bring forth. That's very helpful. And the littler figure in front of the big one, is that female? No, it's Shakyamuni Buddha who was male. And that, um, refers to, not compassion, but... Well, Shakyamuni Buddha was, um, the teacher in this world system who brought forth Buddha. And he's the awakened one. Buddha means, the root of the word Buddha is buddh, which means awake. And he was the awakened one. And Buddhism is awakeism. It's the religion of being present and awake. That's what it's all about. And the figure down in the garden that is female? Yes, those are,

[72:32]

um, we have a number of them. They're Avalokiteshvara, which are also compassion figures and in female form. So we have the Jizo in male form. We have the Avalokiteshvara in female. So it's this same energy that, you know, depending on the culture or the artist even, was brought forth. I mean, they're traditional figures. They have attributes, you know, they have certain things they do with their hands that denote their teaching or bestowing, you know, fearlessness or all sorts of things that the mudra show. But they're all for you, you know, they're to connect with your own aspirations and your own most innermost, what's most important to you. Thank you. That's very helpful. I actually had other questions along the way, but I'll drop those now. Can you talk about Zen and Buddhist view of death and reincarnation? Where the idea that, um, I mean, it's getting up and I'm speaking as a night person.

[73:51]

We all need six, three to eight or nine hours sleep depending on who we are. And as long as you get those hours and work in the other time, I've always wondered, where is it written that it's better to do it in the morning than later in the day? You mean do religious practices or or do what in the morning? Get up? Get up, right. But if you didn't, you know, join us and work until two in the morning and then get up at ten. Yeah. Some people do. Yeah. Traditionally, early morning and before bed are supposedly good times to do meditation in lots of different traditions. So, but you know, everyone's got their own rhythms and constitutions. You might be hard to sit with a group, you know, if you want to sit with a group. Death and reincarnation, that's very interesting. Somebody asked for a practice discussion with

[74:56]

me last week to talk about that very thing and how disturbed she was about it and so on and so forth. So let's see. The Buddha, when he was asked about that, as far as I know, you know, said, you know, about other lives and future and what's going to happen and various things that he may very well have been able to tell, didn't answer because he wanted to bring the assembly or the person who was asking back to the importance of being awake in the moment. What is going on now? What is the speculation about what may be or what may not be, may not be conducive to bringing yourself to the present and what's going on in your life right this minute, right now, not even a minute,

[75:59]

right this moment? Are you awake? So he wouldn't answer. There's a whole list of things he just wouldn't answer about, you know, that he, you know, maybe he could, maybe he couldn't, but it was beside the point. So in some ways, and it's not talked about all that much, I think, because Zen does emphasize so much the present. But there is, you know, Dogen, who's the Japanese founder of this school, you know, there's many things where he writes that the importance of life and death is the main, the main thing of our life. Birth and death is the main thing. And many people come to practice because of birth and death, because of death of a loved one, or, what? Fear, fear of death, and so forth. So that birth and death

[77:04]

are extremely important. And not wasting your time, you know, this, on the Han, it has a poem, and at the end, it says, don't waste time. At the end of these poems that we chant in the morning, it admonishes us to not waste time. This is precious human life we have. And we'd never know when, as I said, the Lord of Death will come. Do not waste your time. And in the monastery, every three and eight day, every day with a three or an eight in the date, there's a ceremony, and we clean our rooms, and we do communal work, and then we bow to one another, which is a thank you for having practiced diligently for the last three or four days. And then there's a chant in it, it says, we should practice like a fish in a puddle, what pleasure is there here? We should practice as if to save our heads from fire. And it's the same that this eighth century poet I was

[78:04]

talking about says, you should practice as if someone threw a snake in your lap, a dangerous snake, and you want to get it like off, you know, how you would act at that point, or if your head was on fire, what you would do. It's with that spirit to practice. This is joyous effort too. So, because death, you know, is, we never know. So don't waste time. This is very important and brought up all the time. But, you know, Dogen says, you know, it is an established teaching in Buddhism that life does not turn into death, and death does not turn into life. Life is life, and death is death. So we have lots of ideas about it. And this person I spoke with, she had just been involved with a medium who brought back, channeled a very dear friend of hers who had died, and this person was speaking to her. What's it all about? You know, what does

[79:06]

it mean? She was so disturbed, you know, because she didn't know what to believe. And so there's a whole realm of the psychic and the occult and the intermediary realm that can really, you know, in some ways may be of use, and in other ways may get one really diverted from what's at hand, which is studying their life and what is happening now, and making that effort over and over again. So in some ways, you can talk about reincarnation as what is the next moment? What are the actions that you are doing now that produce the very next moment? What are the words you are speaking? And because you can be reincarnated the very next moment into a hell realm because somebody sucks you in the face. Why? Because you called him a name. That's the place where Buddhism and Zen

[80:06]

in particular places the energy and the emphasis. Why is it painful to be present? Why is it painful to be present? Well, I think in the Sashin, what the person was talking about was actual physical, you know, your knees are burning and aching. And the funny thing is, is that the more present you are, the less, you know, it's more the fighting against it, that's the pain. If you are willing to just sit there immovably, something will change. There'll be some other understanding of what's going on. But being present means being present for whatever comes your way,

[81:13]

and it may be painful sensations, pleasant sensations, or neutral sensations. So it's not that being present always means pain. But if you're going to be present, there will be pain, you can't get out of it. Stuck? Well, I don't see it as stuck. I see it as the only way, you know, the only way is to stay right there. Because anything else, any other struggle to get away, or to, I'll think about it tomorrow, a la Scarlett O'Hara, it comes back tenfold, you know, if you don't take care of your relationships, even if they're painful, the words you have to hear that have to be said, if you don't take care of that, you know, there's contortions and torques, and it gets all,

[82:16]

it gets to be a really big mess. But it may be painful to hear what someone has to tell you, or to say something that needs to be said. So it's, to me, it's like the only gate, the only way, is everything else is kidding yourself, and could be laziness as well, you know. I was looking at these old notes that I have, and, you know, I think it was 1982, I asked my, I was giving a talk at Tushar, and I asked my daughter, who was like two at the time, what shall I talk about? And she said, don't move, there might be a tiger. I thought that was such a great topic, I can't remember if I spoke about it, but... We actually saw a mountain lion, it was sighted down the last field, about 6.30 at night, between where the horses are and our last field, a mountain lion, not a bobcat, but a mountain lion. No, not last night, but about a week, ten days ago, something like that, about a week ago.

[83:23]

So don't move, there might be a mountain lion. Yes? Could you explain the significance of gender in Buddhism, and how it's evolved? Well, Buddhism arose in cultures, you know, 2,500 years ago, the culture in India was a certain way, with men and women having very particular roles, women not having very many opportunities, being like chattel, I guess, possessions of the father or their husband, and so forth. So Buddhism arose in that culture, and the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, the historical Buddha, was quite egalitarian during that time. He had anyone, in terms of who could enter the order,

[84:27]

untouchables were allowed to, which was kind of unheard of, and women, after some prodding, were allowed to enter the order as well, leave their families, and take on the religious life. But at the same time, there were various, more rules for women, and there were cultural kinds of strictures that were there. Buddhism itself teaches that there's no difference between men and women in terms of Buddha nature, or in terms of ability to understand and realize one's own nature. But this teaching was not necessarily carried out in the cultures, which, just like we're finding at Zen Center, the problems that are in the culture of sexism and racism, and the patriarchal society's way of viewing things, it's not like we're immune from any of that. It all happens

[85:28]

right here too. And the same in those cultures. So in India, and then in China, and Japan, and Burma, and Laos, and Vietnam, and all those places, the women's role was subservient to the men. So Buddhism has this reflected in some of the writings. But the teaching itself, if you go back to the teaching of the Buddha, there is nothing that categorically says women are not able. So it's changing. As Buddhism came to the West, out of the Asian countries, it's taken on the changes of our society, the culture of our society, which includes feminism and psychology. Those are the two main streams of Western culture that are changing Buddhism quite radically. And Dogen, and Suzuki Roshi too. So when Suzuki Roshi came

[86:34]

from Japan, where the temples were basically segregated, there was monks and nuns. Priests could marry, but in the training monasteries, you didn't sit side by side, men and women. But when he came to America, Zen Center has always been just about 50-50, and we've always sat in the same meditation hall together. And Dogen also, he says it's laughable. In the Shobo Genzo, his main work of 90 essays, he says it's laughable to think that because men have, does he say this? I better not quote him. No, I think he actually says it's laughable to think that because men have penises, that they're somehow more enlightened or can be more enlightened than women. He says it's laughable, it's a joke. But that's kind of some of the things that were said, you know, men have more nobility and this and that. But you have to sort through some of the things that in Theravada countries, like Burma and some of these places,

[87:42]

the women, I remember a woman from Zen Center went to study in Thailand, and she was a very tall woman, but women were never supposed to be higher than the men, the monks and practitioners, so she had to constantly find lower ground to stand on while she was talking with the male monks. And they were doing work outside, that you can't touch something, you can't hand something directly, men and women. She'd have to lay her tool down, and then the monk would come and pick it up from where she laid it down. So there's lots of these things that are embedded in, you know, the daily life of the practice place or the monastery that are, and in the rules of supposedly Buddhist monks and nuns, but they are very culturally, it's a cultural expression rather than, my feeling, rather than a Buddhist expression. So that's, you know, that's just the tip of the iceberg. And I feel things are changing

[88:46]

differently in the United States. I just feel compelled to share a different kind of effort than the one we've been talking about, which I think was mentioned a couple different times, like when times when I'm actually feeling quite empty and want to jump out of that into some sort of frenetic activity and actually take some effort to say, wait, what I'm feeling is an emptiness right now. I'm not really in any centered way feeling moved towards any particular productive activity. And it feels more, like you said, on something around the path of wholeness, to sit with the emptiness, and it takes an effort at that point to stop from just jumping into the habitual activity and stay with the inner state and let that be expressed in my posture and in my state of non-activity at that point. That's exactly right. That's joyous effort. That's turning

[89:50]

towards wholesomeness. And joyous effort does not necessarily have to be any activity at all. It can be sitting quietly doing nothing, when that's exactly right. So yes, that's exactly. I think we mistake activity of any sort for this kind of vigor or joyous effort. But it may not be anything but someone sitting calmly. Thank you. How are we doing here? Yes. I just had a question about being present. As human beings, what we've learned growing up is to filter information, and it's to keep us from going crazy. Because if we took in everything around us, it would be immobilized. That's one thought. And another thought is that

[91:02]

take a great scientist or a great musician or someone like that, that might be very, very present in the creating of their work, what they're doing. But at the same time, in the giving in to that creation, it seems that there has to also be a great deal of lack of presence towards perhaps a spouse or the person who's feeding you or the food itself, because the concentration on that particular venture is so great. So I was just wondering, how do you view that? Well, the way our mind works is that we can only focus on one thing at a time, actually. But they come very fast. But even when we think we're scattered, we actually are focusing on one

[92:09]

thing at a time, but very fast. So what you said about having to filter our human body and our senses and the sixth sense fields and the sixth sense organs, including the mind, do a sound arises and the organ responds. The organ is not the ear itself, but the capacity to respond to a certain kind of stimuli that actually arises. And we can only turn our attention to one at a time of those things. So we do filter out. We do filter out for the good of the organism what can be managed. I think we also sometimes filter out as a child in terms of emotional conditions. We turn away from things that we can't bear, painful situations or actions of those around us that we love that aren't too much. We also turn away from those for our own survival

[93:12]

and can't be present. We can't be present for those because we'd flip out or something. We would be harmed greatly. We're not ready. Our body and mind can't receive the truth of something maybe when we're young. So we tune out or go numb or various things for our own survival. I think we know we do do that. And a lot of sometimes Buddhist practice is undoing some of that. Or now when we are ready, when we do have the capacity to withstand the pain, we look back at some of these and untangle and re-look at and study our lives in a certain way. In therapy you might do that too. So that's a present now that we have. Because these things keep coming up, old things bubble up in the present.

[94:16]

So as for musicians and people who have abilities to have one point in mind, one-pointedness is also amoral. A good thief can have one-pointedness of mind and get in and out of that bank without leaving a fingerprint in. They have to be very present and alert.

[94:44]

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