January Practice Period Class

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the is issue is to type of as versus

hmm

why

be
it appears that norman is going to be doing most of the
actual explanation line by line explication of the
diamond sutra
and in doing so it allows me to stray field a beard and explore some in aspects
that irrelevant and but
and jermaine i hope not but not necessarily on
specifically addressed to just that sutra
the last time i talked here
few days ago seems that
there is a lot of interest in
exploring the world is limited this way that people seem to feel the need to express
something that transcends the usual kind of dry categorizing the doctor i know
parts of our learning here and
i thought today one of the questions that
might allow that to
be a kind of key to open some discussion a little later as i say a few things is
a question that big word called identity
i said the last time that i was here he used that phrase you've heard me used before that the name of the game the name of the game is the game of the name
and we said that
you've already know pretty much
come to grips with the idea that
the cycle physical
events forms relationships we have with a world called dharmas carry with him characteristics
fire is hot
water wet earth is solid i inform year and sound and so on
and that we attribute
characteristics project characteristics from our experience and to phenomena that's essentially empty of our ideas about gender it
and react or respond accordingly too
the kind of identity we have for identities i think it's word questioned the plurality that we have established between ourselves for oneself and one's world
so want to talk a little bit about that and i want to read
something from the garfield translation of nitrogen is the fundamental wisdom of the middle way which i had brought up

because i think it's important
for us to understand how we rely our identities are all the various sub personalities that we have developed
from the beginning
when somebody asks us who we are we usually explain ourselves know in terms of what we do what do what do you do i'm a buddhist priest a dr emma lawyer i'm a this summer that i'm out of work
we don't usually say that we have an identity that arises it in terms of who we are when we're with a one one on one relationship or wife or lover
different identity maybe with a good friend a different identity that comes up at our work
identities that we have associated with our families
now we have put together
and mostly we put it to go out of language and the emotional as i say we activity that concurrently arises with the words that we associate ourselves with

and that can see in the dharmas and the characteristics that we attribute to people places and things well we do have an identity and it's necessary in the conventional world we begin to get a little bit of wisdom of a little bit hip into seeing
through our game the name of the game
at the same time is very important we have an idea that we know what our place in the creation in the world is
and most of us at one point or another and particularly in places like like green gulch are in transition were in some kind of movement in our life where the identities that we have established in the past no longer work we're looking for a new identity and new weight and
a new way to come to grips with
we would like to be or who were going to be
and in the studying of this question of emptiness
we began to get sensitive to the fact that identities are conventional modes of expression
but as i said before the very nurturing linguistic conventions but their emotional conventions and there very necessary to our sense of well of belonging somebody's somehow
and it isn't enough to say well i'm empty
have any intrinsic self therefore i must be happy and then i you know how they want to kill myself or go bowling
a
and i quoted a quote from naga judith
from the the characters are now on the four noble truths which is very important
a part of the fundamental wisdom of the middle way or the moolah with my jamaica cody gus
that which said whatever is conventionally arisen is explained as being ambient emptiness that being a convention or designation is the middle way and i thought
as a kind of doorway into what i want to when i'm driving at here today to things to see through our identities and how they come about but also the importance of identity
that wow this is very wonderful book by the way j garfield's work the next explaining some of this we have an a library i find it very useful you can seven got a mark and minutes past
certificate but so he said whatever is dependably core reason that is explained to the emptiness that being independent and designation is itself a middle way this carica eighteen of the examination of the four noble truths
and he says negligent establishes and critical three way relationship between emptiness dependent origination and verbal convention between emptiness dependent origination origination and verbal convention and asserts that this relation itself is the middle way
as we shall see this is the basis for understanding the emptiness of emptiness itself
naga june is asserting that the of dependently arisen is emptiness
and we've already talked about the enormous talked about their quite a bit i don't think there's much question about that we have to go into with that aspect emptiness in the phenomenal world are not two distinct things they are rather to characterizations of the same thing
to say something that it is dependently core reason is to say that is empty to say that something is empty is another way of saying that it arises dependently moreover
whatever and now this is what i want to believe and do whatever is dependent the court risen as a verb which is verbally establish that is that identity the identity of any dependently arisen thing depends upon verbal conventions
to save a thing that it is dependently arisen is to say that it's identity as a single entity is nothing more than as being the referred have a word
the thing itself apart from conventions of individualization has no identity to save a thing that his identity is merely a verbal fact about it is to say that it is empty
to view the emptiness in this way is to see it neither as an entity nor as unreal it is to see it as conventionally real
and it is as conventionally who real that all of this
her most of us
and some time or other strive to be
now
you could say they were born with certain predisposition
and we get were born with a certain way of taken me know we have a certain posture certain stance a certain style of coming on in the world and it's very clear what that is
to oneself and one's family and friends after a certain amount of time so that's given to begin with those you know and what's interesting is a kind of footnote to this instead when people put on robes and sit in the zendo and move about in the zendo versus wearing just streak roles and son
you can see the individuality more clearly individual particular style or stamps at a person has or posture you might say not only the former since which just how one carries oneself in the world
and then you would have suspected and otherwise i have noticed that many many times i when people wear robes were all wearing the same thing that are individual identities differences are more accentuated than when we don't
and see if that doesn't hold true for yourself
we know that when we sit still you know eyes are down in a person is walking by if we'd been around very long we we know without even looking up just kind of on the periphery who that person is
i remember i once sat for twenty four hours
i was talk about that
zealous but i decided once that after firewatch i would sit on a we'd settled there as so i certainly gaetano night and the as you know living in the gaitan there's a lot of coming and going as people go the bathroom is it open and closed doors and go and whoever was that came by me during the night without even looking up to spare the footsteps and
where the person walk i knew the identity of that person
so we're program this way out we were programmed how these identities and and to you know place an identity and a word for each thing in the world and that's how we function
but to the extent that we take these seriously particularly let's see the name that we are given
is and to redefine to substantiate it in some ah
through some hard line view of ourselves is a curse a recipe for misery and suffering as we know there's a call on it so case sixty eight of the blue cliff record you probably have heard this one yang sean's what's your name yeah chance what's your

young son asked swooshing what is your name
she said koichi cheat know we choose another way of seeing young shot actually in chinese i guess this is a pun on the mountains from which the tubes names would take it what's your what's your name young shot or witchy
no shine said koichi that's me
she said
my name is young shot
or we john
yeah shaun roared with laughter

it's like saying maybe mr black and mr white to mountains what's your name black meets white
well i'm black know that's my name or can be white and so the whole point and the poetry and in the commentary is talking about how these two so that you know we talk about the two truths right there's the universal or the
what we call on the ultimate truth which is the truth of emptiness that the and grasp ability of phenomena and as same time there is the conventional truth and that these two as as always the case and in cohen's are playing with the relative and absolute so when is always in cohen's when one posits
the absolute the other comes right back with the with the relative
so young chances you know my name is white what what's your name or madame white in your your black and you say what i'm white won't know i'm like okay then i'll be black and and so we just
we see the relativity of names and we kind of empty out the importance that we attached to that and at the same time if we take somebody's name away you know if you if you did somebody deprives you of your name of your identity was you know if you've been in an identity crisis and sooner or later we all
our and not once but more than once than we know the importance of what happens when our name as usurped in some way
correspondingly when i was given the name of and i actually decided when mel gave me that name i can like doesn't sound of it but because it was easy to remember but i won't it be like actually take on another name at this time in my life do i become a different person with any well to the question is yes and no
that actually when i began to be addressed as diagon rather than david or dave or longhand or something else in my family had called me
when my friends i have good friend who's coming dingle berry that was there
that i would respond accordingly
i gotta carry you know there's the great vol carries a certain way and a certain responsibility that weight and so on and i would find out that when i'm diane and i'm be die ganze giving the talk and on that dingle berry
that diagon i react little bit differently than i do in other cases and other under assumed names and as an actor in life and we're all actors are we all act out that these different roles that we assume and are given and i say assume and are given because it is
it does dependently arise doesn't it
you see me a certain way i begin to respond a certain way and as normand said yesterday when we treat people as buddha and people begin to actually respond as buddha so
who's question of having a name you just can't piece sloughed off is something that superfluous like his shirt that we can just take off her shirt and get a new shirt
we cover our nakedness our psychic nakedness with names as well we cover our physical nakedness with clothing
hmm
i can tell you some stories here but this i was thinking
ah
about a time
about fourteen years ago or less when i went through a period of been
we could say denuded
of all identities ahead and no longer had a job and no longer had a personal relationship
that moment guess i had chosen to live
and i found myself live in this hut at
near the water
and rely on the good offices and benevolence and beneficence of friends and other people to support me
the incredible anguish
the rose by not having an identity
nobody came to see me particularly because people have their lives
and i discovered something amidst my
suffering i discovered that
well couple of things one is the obvious thing that whether or not i was responding to some sense of myself as an identity as a place that i've found that you know i lost my place in the world and losing your place in the world was like losing yourself but i realized that this darkness that the clinic
it is kind of dark place would be very rich but if i had had a choice to avoid it i would have done so but i found i had willy nilly in some sense that my life have to find this place actually so
i notice however that when i walked outside the sun shone on me and said this before that the dog knew me didn't care who i was that he would follow me around wagging his tail became a good friend
and i if i was paintings doing some work around the place caretaking for the folks over taking care of me which i did i would say well today i'm a house painter
and that's so pain house and they'll go in and sit for a well and write a letter well no i'm a letter writer and i notice the importance with which to give myself some might say a rotating designation commissioner of days a nation of who lists what this side of experience was about
and i saw the importance of having a name of sushi for a place in the world and

i also realize that i had led a long life filled with people places things and experiences and in my training as as and student before i left
and already course come upon the emptiness teachings and about the fact of what i'm speaking of hear that things are empty of in the self nature per se but that didn't knowing it didn't absolutely nothing to relive the pain i was suffering
and i found all these voices in me all of this desire to
express myself to find my place in the world and been going to realize that them
the importance of poetry the importance of finding your place your voice
and so on
i wrote a poor
and some have you heard it but i'm going to
you'll excuse me i'm going to be a couple of poems today but i'm going to start with this one because i think it's relevant
and by doing this poem by rain home
suddenly i was a poet
suddenly life came for it was like you you hit bottom you know it it's like a deeper and deeper and deeper into the darkness if been just just sank with it
you know maybe just breathe from one to ten and start again i that woman friend did whatever whatever you don't get you through the night the long night
you will hit bottom and and essential you hit a place to go boom things go bombings are coming up again and as you come up language comes in words come in thoughts come in which language
so i just thinking of all of this stuff of in the attic here are down and here which and i said a poem goes
who is left in the attic among the discarded albums calling out my name to tell its story leave everything it says leave the dishes in the sink i was doing all the dishes food answering their phones it's leave the dishes in the sick let the phone ring lock the
door and tell my story even you i'm calling you from the addictive silence of stars you who have talked to trees listen to stone on a hot afternoon who give away who gave away your voice to the stream that you might know it's cool message for the flop for the clock
for the clock keeps running and my words are wrapped in yellow paper turn your eyes toward me one last time to your eyes toward what is hidden in the bones beneath your shirt were songs come from from the river of your heart flowing through days happy and said and we will rejoice together
i'm here i'm here with you as you stand had pointed skyward arms and fingers spread i would do that sometimes like this
feet planted apart on the ground in emptiness and emptiness that breathes in thunderheads this summer day in the garden blooms that twirl before the wind in hungary tongues that long for one more song for time that thirst endlessly for itself in blood that carries on a whispering campaign
ain through the roots deep in the soil of your being now now take a sheet of white paper and write these words on it quote do not be afraid this is what i am
so at that moment
at that moment
i realize you have to proclaim will you are you is not enough to say i can see through language i can see through words i can see through the different roles i play and like young john and let these other and add depths simply moved from one to the other so easily just by understanding that process no no no
now it's not it doesn't work like quite like that the reason i'm also bringing this up because the other day as we talked i felt there was a hunger and the room that out of out of these teachings that we have there's a hunger for us to get in touch with see if i could call it the poetic to put his life and by poetic i don't mean the exaggerated life
i've
the candy coated life i mean the deep the deepest aspect of ourselves the part that moves us most most profoundly in the world
to find that place that identity is one's eyes think this practice is about that the sitting practice is about
because even as we sit and hear these various voices calling to us
and watching them come and go when even if we go through different jana's and states who were that whole narrative ceremony drops away and were free of that constriction that limitation we can face the moment to moment death of our identities and song without any contraction or
pain even even so even then well as soon as we get up turn away from the wall and move outside into the sunlight and the world of other people and saw it the drama starts up again the question of who am i what am i with all of all of you
and the what am i with all of you as we've already established very clearly as i am what i am with all of you because all of you are exactly who you are and so on clear across the cosmos everyday that as soon as we make a larger telescope space expands that much more so far as dippers i
go into myself that much more his inner space open in open out or inward and i look for a place in which to place myself open my hands and say i'm here
ha
as we get older
as we know as we get older and we look in the mirror we've played those games even when we're young member of the first time you looked in a mirror and you really stared that yourself in the mirror and you'd want your face change become i'm not talking about when you are on acid or something that really did that too
i'm talking i mean that was easy didn't see it then the faces of your friends drinking going through or from babes to old drones but just watch your own face going through all these changes and ah you know it's kind of little bit spooky this has been entertaining to see that that you know that you can't grasp the
is this site intangible self but there's a woman a wonderful poet is she's a
australia woman who's who's got to be a certain age and or life and i played the whole game of identity in the world it as being a woman now i'm sure the wilderness we will in this room appreciate the fact that as a woman there's all these other things are in a quote so called male dominated society of the past
at least that did you were required to play
and she's recent place in your life where she's finally gone through a lot of that i don't know much about her name was a floured ed cock cock teaser
australia importance
and she goes to a place where she's alone to find herself a bit and a solitary place apparently so she wrote a poem about weathering and she's looking in the mirror and seeing herself and sees the face in the mirror and suddenly she understands the
this new kind of wit weathering of this happening she's a woman and maybe approaching late fifties
geez she wrote my face catches the wind from the snowline my face catches the wind from the snowline and flushes with a flush that will never wholly settle well that was a metropolitan vanity wanted to look young forever to pass i was never a pre raphaelite beauty and only pray
enough to be seen with men who wanted to be seen with passable women
but now that i'm in love with a place that doesn't care how i look or if i am happy happy is how i look and that's all
i love that lie but now that i'm in love with a place and you can see the whole world amount of fuel in this way but the whole cosmos
now that i'm in love with a place that doesn't care how i look or if i am happy happy as how i look and that's all
my hair will grow grey and any case my nails chip and flake my waist thickened
and the years work all their usual changes if my face is to be weather beaten as well it's literally enough last for a year among lakes and fails were simply to look out of my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and to what my
my soul may wear or it's new concussion
isn't that great
if my face is to be weather beaten as well this little enough last for your among lakes saloon of loss for a euro sitting on a cushion
we're simply to look up of my window at the high pass makes me indifferent to mirrors and and to what other people say to the mirrors of the world and to what my soul may were over its new complexion
fleur and cock e d c o c k know i actually heard this offer of a record and it men have been babcock but some like and cock
and i remember that the identity that would start up came out of tears i remember saying to myself real tears burned my cheeks and out of them shall i bloom again
we have to go through this question of identity crises
and see through that game but we can't just see through it intellectually that's the whole point of the stock we have to actually go through an emotionally and we have to do in the world itself whoever that will may be to find the you know we say that to find a where the real me please stand up and raise your and the
real you will stand have some time and raise your hand but every review of course will be real for a while and then another real you another part of the are many sub personalities the many fasten itself will come for it
because we are infinite in our ability to to change
but most of the cellar cell are you and i don't think anybody in this room is here because they've sold out to the world i think we're here because we refuse to sell out to the world in terms of how we can be pigeonholed
when i think that's one of the reasons that people come here to study the dharma with us is that they feel that their yeah
the the identities that we glean from the mass media and from one another in our upbringing
are inadequate in fact are definite source of of anguish
it's a little bit it's a little bit problematical as the you know for a trained musician or something like that and have a profession that also very fulfilling
that's one thing
one question if we're on the spiritual path and take vows and so on the hook a whole question that evolves around that is to of course minutes to shed the various selves to see through the games of the name that we place on ourselves and not to get caught in status questions
but of course has any of us know who studied here very long we all get caught up in our it's no longer worldly status as the status of how we were a rogues how we bow how we do our or aoki hawaii the comparative mind is still at work and the identities that we take on thereby and reflection of rather people
ol can still be a big problem and at the same time really
choice
choice meat raw meat for practice
we come here in fall in love lot of people do that and by having relationships and be insensitive to one another and becoming involved in one on one relationships is another way of of
finding our identities are who we are too often we fall into the own parents would come here trying to break away from all parents only to find out that withdrawn right back into the same old games and you noticed any my
guess not well i'm
hi

and and you know you get very good very prideful pride is because we are
we do have this ability to to split reality into two parts you know that's a marvelous accomplishment and i think ribbed talked about this once about how pray pray for human beings are because we have this ability to split up the world into to reapply it and so will be proud of that you know
but we carry that to the extreme of projecting our particular views and so on to others in the than reacting accordingly to whether we like it or not what comes back edison and that causes of course the suffering
and that reminds me of a story so we'll have a little discussion but i had to tell this story first
about how you assume you know who somebody is you know we just as i said airily we we look at somebody and read away we have all these projections we are about to pigeonhole one another and to a separate identities this is a this person who has all these characteristics all of these marks that person has all those marks or characteristics
those diamonds and and that's who that person is and i can tell myself that's not true but still and notice i'm responding accordingly so i was a had this job was her who told you this story to read but it was a wonderful job it was a remarkable opportunity i was
which i was giving body and soul together different ways while i was trying to learn how to paint and also i was doing some astrology a teacher and so on but anyway i was a kind of fringe person and so i was taken on different joke about twenty five two thousand and two years ago twenty twenty years ago maybe
somebody offered me a job of selling papers on the street for two hours every morning five mornings a week for three hundred dollars a month
and the my military response to this friend and it happen to be somebody had coffee with every morning who was a newspaper of distributor was selling papers on the street i'm a college graduate and evil some papers on the street imgur you know i'm somebody well and then i thought the you see listen that other ways that comes in says
the i don't do it good don't say no don't don't get caught do it so i said wow okay yeah
and i guess it was because the chronicle was putting on this this campaign when new usa today came off for so they were almost giving these papers were any way he'd give me a hundred papers every morning i'd go down to fourth and heatherton at the
san rafael where the was a transfer point for all over merryn for people going into the city at rush hour from six thirty eight so i got to know everybody on the street you know they get because i'd be the one person standing there in this sea of bodies moving often these mechanical dragons ryan these people away to the city
and i got the not allow the street people and one of the street people ah the street people would sooner or later know that day was an easy touch so they would say here are you will have a you know enough some change for a change i'm going to get my check tomorrow that was the line i'm going to get my check to myopia back in one of them i called him on
actually i call them to myself lindy it wasn't a very nice name i forget about his real name was but he he limped and you had to kind of stand back from him because he gave off a very unpleasant
older and vibe but he always liked to stop and talk to me and he would always end up by hitting me up for some money for coffee and that first of course being a compassionate buddha body suffer that i had already decided that i was going to be and that this was my street ministry i didn't tell him what it is but this was one because people
will come up just confess everything do
one person just one person got off the bus ones came straight up to me and said she left me
she took her car and left me the cat that's why i'm sorry mm
and i listened on because i was a stranger of anyways so it was like a street ministry and there's a wonderful lesson and humanity was like a humanities course one or one and they've got three hundred bucks a month words so but anyway by begin to stereotype these people know there are no longer fresh and i was being the resent this guy
and then
pretty soon as you have come in a kind of look away and only to come up and is are talking to me and sure enough you hit me up for some money and i just couldn't say hey pay up or shut up
detect i'm sure and my attitude toward him that something had changed era wasn't the the nice guy and pretended to be so one day i saw him coming up in these and i really try to ignore him you know libby
goes were black and lamp to him and he said he
as the companies said it come here and i plan to turn and he said watch put out your hair because say is always something like thirteen was a lot of money because
thirteen dollars in some so i put on my hand and he said watch one two
it and one of the thirteen dollars and how about a buck for interests don't think you know
that so at that moment at that moment i woke up and i thought in the phrase came to my mind and i use it many times since who knows how the bodies africans who knows how the bodies have in our life the board itself as an activity that wakes us up to everybody we all perform that activity with one another
in some way and it broke through of these identities this you know and just the way senate he was much smarter than i gave him credit you know he knew the whole trip that was going out with me and there's going gonna teach me a lesson and he did
the don't think you know smart guy
your body sample but you can be an asshole
the
here's a poem by so i think visa via works by david why god the son
and the wonderful thing about his poetry is that he's talking he talks about these transition points about dropping away our old identities breaking through the crust and michelle do we have developed around ourselves and he also sits in fact you'll become in here for the millennium series wonderful poor i really
really recommend that you go here and there just just marvelous is called the son he's writing about an irish poet named kevin i know if you've heard a cabinet cabinet is a great great great irish for dinner ended up his life and that was kind of a drunken
a very sad story anyway but he had fought against the usual irish kind of nationalistic
posture that the post has taken as who is very unpopular in his own country for a long time but after his death he became well known and is later poems he writes all these later love poems trying to reclaim his lost innocence and fifty years before he didn't love with a young woman named hilda and they're called the holder palms name
the
i think inc and recite the i hid it in the alien in down under because our ahead a book of cabinet and i was it's hard to get a try to get kevin has portrayed hard to get but he has one volume of it and more are coming i understand of his later poems of which david white rights and and i can read all the poem but
some of those things that i think are germane to what i'm talking about it's called the sun the sun this morning on the deck i'm sorry this morning on the desk facing up a poem of kavanaugh's celebrating a lost love she was the son he said and now she still lives in the fiber of his arms were warmed through all the years folding
in the old man it's hand in hers on a sunday dublin morning and this is the free sometimes reading cabina sometimes reading cabinet i look out at everything growing so wild and faithfully beneath the sky and wonder and wonder why we are the one terrible part of creation privileged to refuse our own flower
sometimes reading kevin i look out at everything growing so well and faithfully beneath the sky and wonder why we are the one terrible part of creation privilege to refuse our own flowery
i know in the text of the hearts the flour is our death and the first opening of a new life we have yet to imagine but kevin line reminds me how i want to know the sun and how i want to flower and how i want to claim my happiness and how i want to walk through life amazed and inarticulate with sex and i
i want to know that weren't through love itself and through the sun itself
is more in the poem but that's
so
the volume has called the house of belonging we may have the that i hear in the bookstore
didn't you have your out of example yeah i do this where g my other martha's by sheer on she's on
for some reason i put it if i was going to read it
but this i was i was thinking of the
that
after i mentioned that a who knows how the body software comes i did write a poem and and that is the first fine
oh who knows how the bodhisattva comes the one who saves all beings before herself he may drive a bus she may serve you in a greasy spoon it could be you or me but not when we are trying consciously the drunkard on his knees as he waits the dirty face of his lover with
the handkerchief went by his mouth with such tenderness with such tenderness as stuns the watcher of the seen the boy antenna is pulling from the freezing water a schoolmate who's fallen through but also my friend also as you sit there looking at your hands anger and grief fear or lust not to mention despair given room
i'm given room allowed the space to breathe to be what each one is before like a snowflake it melts before the gaze of your accepting heart
this wipes the dirty face of lover was also actually are
two people through street people
spastic who young woman named sharon
who used to come on she asked icon especially as when specially she had multiple sclerosis she was three person and she was amazing because any new know it was female persuasion at first because of the dirty clothes and but as absolutely fearless determination to be
who she was in the face of her own personal catastrophe and she would go up to people in the line and put our hand and here are the people buttoned up tight right their briefcase and and ring on the bus and here she comes up to him canada
like that and people would turn away or give her something that each morning she'd come over to me now and
when she said to me
you know she's is sushi would get her ssi she'd gotten drink it
and was anyways and then she had this this other the street person another alcoholic young guy named mike
who's younger than her
they got together somehow and then one day you'd see them together in the next day she turned up the black one day she would turn up with a black eye and you can see him and she would curse out mike and then you'd see mike
watching from behind cars and
and then the next day mike when they make would turn up with a black guy she'll be watching him
and then there was this day where i hadn't seen either informal and she stumbles down the street and system in total kind of just collapses on this bench and might comes along and he kids down in front of her i'll never forget it almost chose for the thing of he takes on as heck
she said no and i what they're going to find you dead sharon and street one of these warnings and then they're going to take your what's left your body to a place cleaned it up a little bit and then laid under a sheet on a big stainless steel table under very bright lights and an amplifier of filled with young interns and pay
faces looking down pull the sheet of of view and pathologists or doctor of anatomy will stand with a nice sharp scalpel above and lay you open from your sternum down dear
don't your pelvis and reach in and cut out your big disease liver and hold it up and say this is what alcohol does and she looked at me she said thanks dave you always make my day
the
ha

anyway
i think the whole point of everyday yeah i think you've got the point boots
whatever ideas we have about people each of us here and anywhere else in our life about our identities and how we project different characteristics you so we play our a slippery game
and if all the world's a stage as they say that we should all be joyful players and and play like the two monks who play with each other's names back and forth bandy than back and forth stole each other's territory stole the flag and drum from one another and i was okay to do that because they understand that this is this dependently arises
with all the feelings in a drum of very drama of our life is are very place to be
without attachment if possible
so now it's with five minutes to ten i've managed to as i was hoping i could do to take up of the first hour and then leave
some room for discussion about identity if you wish how it relates to know as i see i said we relating to all of our practice very very very very or
the precisely
but had how you feel about these questions or something that we're studying here and hold vitalize is us rather than divide lasers us and makes this kind of
call an uptight
dreary people rather than happy alive warm hearted people
so
thank you so much i found an extremely helpful here that would bring probably trying to see through the emptiness pregnant is a decade still being demanded it i think that go against it
when is he reminded that battens practice
am i
at a question about something you seem to be about to say earlier but maybe you could fall through at the mindset that
there can be some difficult the a person has a
satisfying and was working on the and was also practice
well it's just that you know if we work very hard to become successful in some field i was thinking a musician for example
a professional musician who's practiced or a doctor so i take mrs tait the musician and builds up an identity around them when that if you know this is a pianist said they used for her hands are broken she can't do that anymore the whole edifice comes on at the house of cards if you haven't see
seen that the conditions with which you have built up this identity are dependably core reason and can dependably color rise in a way that will take an elevation that's what i'm not so that different
but i thought what he meant was that this here as my day
nothing has happened to her hands yeah and shifting a successful pianos and she's also practicing dharma and
trying to remember in fact even now she's wildly successful on everybody comes to our patterns that it's empty and i mean is there well she could see that maybe mean issued if she doesn't sooner or later the doctor or somebody's going to knock on her door and says all over toads then what are you going to do know what you're going to do that was my
question
what are we gonna do no matter how successful our life years quote because we've we've we've really managed somehow with luck with good karma would call a what you will to be happy in our life because we're getting everything we need to feel fulfilled vital in the midst of the world being in the world in such a way that the world comes forward and and vida
lies as us and we feel that we're giving back to the world and that's when have intent of a suppression of happiness i think
and we put off the idea that you know i'm going to find out that i have only so long to live or sooner or later i'm going to have to die was we we say what's used to be more bit about like what are we do actually when our friends begin to die
and we can't control things you know and then paying creeps in
because in the world of flux what you get you lose so what do we do well our loss
i would do a bloom out of our tears are we willing to do that are going to sell out
you know what he would david white talks a lot about is how you know we when you get the older you get the ideas to take a really low posture in the world now get your insurance together in your retirement funds and so on and hope that you don't stick out so you get slapped down in some way rather than when you're young you're willing to climb the mountain
willing to step out take a chance and that life is constantly saying step i take a chance drop drop the thing that
you maybe your gift but also your limitation because our gives her are are limitations at the same time keeping us away from some other
so
the to jump into that darkness until are different i think of as falling backwards in the darkness and knowing that you'll be caught
you know the the you'll be cradled by the world is
taking that kind of chance rather than and play it safe but the tendency is as you get older i consider myself as i want to play it safe
and what to off the boat
but life says gonna write the boat
yeah somebody else was before you i think it was a writer i was just thinking in response to suit question is do there's only a
think an awareness even though you may be
as
no had who really is and how did you get to be a you
yeah yeah this house really are you know
i think that's for the kind of
they can
you realize it go right and wrong
like in haven say you know
in eating
freedom
yeah you'd meet people i said who got everything it seems and they also seem to be free of attachment to it
yeah
ah
at twenty three years all parties one common yeah
i
i feel that
there was a time when
i started
no denying life's call to come forward and put it all out there
long long ago
i will be that was around ten
i and
it's just it's just this furious her for me that it's like
how much i'm holding back his immense and that is force behind a dam
i'm just aware of this
ten that seats this idea that comes up that i want to
live for a while
and therefore you know want to protect my life and be safe and protect my ego and not yet
psychologically destroyed and
yeah
so it's just
and i was just amazing to be right now that the damn
at pressure on fire
i feel like they wanna
the
you know what today be my last day learn all the out there

i wonder if you can comment on is to encourage me to what seated meditation as to do that single mutation as well
i mean utah and will continue controller in our life and i'm talking about something that comes from without without their that will open the floodgates in your life that you won't be in control over opens the floodgates of your life
yeah mean you like to be i'd like to be but life comes for it and in and i think blanche hartman is it was the one who's used the phrase somebody to told her life jumps suddenly you know you find yourself in in quite a different identity as the person who told her that story
who's in mexico and got picked up on a drug charges on yourself overnight from being a tourist there to being a mexican prison and the guard syndrome hey gringo live chumps doesn't
so all at once like jumps and when you find that the and everything's ripped off so to speak all the feeling of what supporting a ripped off
you're not going to like it you're going to want to run from you want to use a tendency resident embrace it so then see practice the moves dead once this practice
helps us be able to stand when that force come
because i find what you just said to be absolutely true i mean i can't find that day or that energy or that change that is going to open up my life like that i've been searching or are these thirteen you know point three years entire will don't worry just live keep living and it'll happen to you
you have to worry about me really
i
and a brother from
i don't take my word for it
if you don't have to take my word for
but seated we're seated meditation do for that well if we're sitting it proceeded meditation that build another wall and of security around ourselves then when that was knocked down the see the meditation will seem like a big shuck and jive act that we did in which we also have happens to a lot of us at some point and we you know okamura
talk about this book emergency mentions that that he practiced you know he was among for years and years at ontology and zone with a with a with a which yama roshi as his teacher and then went to cook chromosome university and graduated with their a buddhist studies in always have trained with monk with the massachusetts
with those other two or three months and they build up from scratch this whole temple of there's and had no money and he worked and worked his body to the place where he couldn't sit and his whole health deteriorated and he had to go back to japan he had no job and know status he anointed
get it going to live in his brother's apartment he said in an osaka for two years he couldn't even do talk or how to on the street he said because he was too weak to do that
so he had nothing and they said all at once spontaneously one day he just sat down side to set by himself he said for the first time understood as and it wasn't any longer relevant to what i wanted it was just something that now arose spontaneously
and it didn't solve any my problems but i was sitting for the sake of just sitting just was sitting to set instead of suddenly understood dog and xinjian on my teachers for the first time until then he said at all he said i've read this passage
i had read this passage to predict what the sutras about the arrogance of youth and health and he said i had had use and health and credit that had carried me through but when my youth and house was suddenly ripped off who was i in my city and then he was very depressed you know very you felt that he couldn't do this practice anymore he could his
that i could use but then i realized that i no longer am doing this practice
you've heard before the practice begins to do you so by sitting i think refusing to by sitting with his practice to see for a well when that time comes in your life the floodgates open and sweep you you away you might just finally sit down and come from one to tenants and that's how i'm going to get through this
then for the first time you'll be sitting maybe for the sake of city
in silver lions are so don't worry so much about it you will happen for it
life will arrange it
yeah for years when i would sit i had this image that become a being on the edge of the clip
and i like a bird that its wings down and i wanted to jump that those wins were not going to go up there is no and then sit right here at the like the edge of the time and i told my therapist who a hypnotherapist as i said tell them this image and he said he said maybe it's
haha
well that that that images of leaping from the one hundred foot pole and i've never the middle of a casanova stories about down on about leaping in this open space and so on seems to be part of the teaching was just sleeping when
yes i can get that part in your point began mixing concrete
listen to the
i resorted to you after

hmm
sandy
what's the title of the data
the fundamental wisdom of the middle way i think we have it also the books or maybe
yeah so wonderful book i
we study the characters are extremely difficult to understand it all by yourself but there's and there's another book called the emptiness suitcase by string thrown to strength that's another good work the emptiness of things but i find this guy fuel book to be a wonderful text for explicate for really explain
being the emptiness of the importance that language in the conventional and unconventional world her explanations descriptions how we reaffirm that build up a life around that and then how are the same time we have to see that we live in at it as a middle way and not get stuck in it
that's a tremendous practice and suddenly realize even the very things that were describing in harry's yesterday's as the app is describing all of this we have to realize that we just listened to more description
more storytelling
and that just i mean that that just with and stop was just you know we would like to stop with adjust to the mere concept that we now take that and build a little home around us little nest around us super emptiness teachings so the emptiness teachings has also be empty out
and then the world of farm you know emptied out and emptiness again as recovered in a load of farmers as we understand and that happens in our life is precious you're talking about it is empty now and then
the foreign key reforms itself this is a process actually that we can learn to trust him if we can just get to the dark nights without doing ourselves or other people in know
in some way or or or are getting trapped in in
escape mechanisms alcohol or twitter
yes andrea's hands in a
i mean this discussion of identity i
when he said
in practice predicted last year and it was something that a rushing say about ah
being very tough i artists know why to do their work during the fact that you believe that it was not a good idea and when he didn't say why
but i am i mean that that a lot
you know being a painter i have always by the way as an aside i have always felt uncomfortable asked me what it is that i can me to say yes i know i i've always thought that was rather pretentious response and also radically to i feel i feel i am
that it's integrate our over new things going back then
i i was wondering it
you
if what you think about that about setting that side in terms of identity
yeah for the first ten years if you're going to do practice for ten years don't do it that's because that's what i did
hi i'm just say i'm not trying to be facetious and i just mean that
ah
when i came here i brought my brought some things along you know some oh paints and canvases a little bit and i was finishing up kept them in my room and a guy town and so on and finish them and gave him away
but
i was also given up with those last paintings my identity as quote a painter even though i had not ever ever found myself except as a kind of sunday painter as a hobbyist painter but dumb
i didn't dare to actually
that's where but
at some point i realize that
the reason i had come here
wasn't because i was satisfied with what i was doing in the world at large in my world at large i came here because those things were not
i guess fulfilling his is a tricky word but were not adequate and that i had to it was a by abandoning at least for a while by putting aside something for a while and just allowing to follow your schedule and the learn to be selfless in a way that was hard is hard now trying to fulfill my own nice
it's my one of my direction for a well give it give all that trip up for a well
and i brought that same question of to grab a long time ago he said just give it up for now and later it'll be there
and you can do it again but for now he said just drop it on that's what you're learning here and i thought that was really good and i did
for years and gave it up and then started it all up again because my wife one one picture
yes i have a question about this business which i didn't i think about his identity as nervous as opposed him mean i my identity of the filmmaker isn't the same as it less because i'm not but that's not solely what i'm doing but the energy
the creativity than i'm used to
it of just a flow from me of how am i being rooms in the world and now responses hat an and habit
and it's joyful and sometimes it's helpful so
i've been looking at whether or not to laugh off anthony
or let it slowly
fall away
and i'm sort of sitting in middle of that i don't know exactly when something comes up i was fine get me in i think
having a chance to play in that way play creatively lightens my heart when you know possibly not see another way as and lots of people so nervous idea of shutting off the light
seems you're wrong i haven't i mean i thought about it and i've tried it doesn't work has you know the like comes back on in response to situations and it's just sort of away and
where are you know what what pops into my mind is is that were on this big pot and living the saga living in an intentional particularly intentional religious community is is like being stirred in this big pot
here's that poem by rumi right is it for me
the edges talk about a chip that interest you know and that that we're in this part to give flavor their to everything else every weekly some of the flavoring strain out of us so we all become part of the the stew we contribute to it that way actually so maybe that's how we contribute to the stews is how your usa
but the chick pea tracer jump out of the pot and cook not sit back with a leader and he says don't you try to jump out
you know you think i'm torturing you but i just giving you flavor so you'll mix with her races in space to be the lovely vitality of a human being
remember when you drank rain in the garden that was for this
that's a wonderful a member only did that that was for this and now you gotta give this back and i help you
yeah let's see it's a great first sexual pleasure grace grace sexual pleasure and then a burning fire begins in a friend as something good to eat
so in some sense i think we are contributing all of our creative but we had to do it in this big stew of the sanga here where sometimes it's joyful and sometimes just that joy joyful least that's been my experience and bump about my find out said some of my when i think of my creative tendencies bump into what other people
creative tendencies are
and then now we have to create a new to be creative and it's fit to create a new way of being to yeah
and that's what we're doing things as what we want to do here isn't it means use our vitality in a way that contribute to the
come down off the mountain of the ego and oh spare ourselves and working for the common good in some
and i think that's what we're all trying to do to the best of our ability even if we fail in our own or he was eyes often
this is another name was that know that that
russia will have like
and i i never severe things that make a lot and i see that and any other day actually that all day have be holding back and i'm not i have done anything make it the day and
so i would never fully
out can separate times and then i start to see that did that ah asked ah and
i can understand
why i do that and
maybe i can't help this person can ever happen at miss out that
anything
and she's trying to understand what that
what that years out what that morning back
you know ever said was that many times about a painful selfishness is even though we hold back ourselves from other people in the needs of other people again and again ultimately and now even ultimately almost immediately we feel something's not quite so healthier
comfortable
holding back sometime member t i came to me and said it can you be the ten zero again and is our don't be in the tensile that they tend the tensor had quit and i would have you know if i could have run out of the room if i could have found some kind of excuse but i just remembered saying is that ah sorry anna
don't hold back here give everything a got or and this is why you came in our hold back so i said okay
and right now i'm be an ass you know will i be the driftwood what i do like the spring show you know the buddha's birthday pageant part of me says oh man i don't worry i am you know harder night on of unharmed mama but then i think that one my own and bad for
like that he said same thing i'm only i'm holding something back from some requests it comes to step or another ten's is real reasons you have to hold back but most the time i have to start my own life a hold back because i wanna keep something in reserve for me
even though don't admit it quite that way and it is some activity that's gonna benefit but it's really for me
and that seems to be part of our condition as human beings mean this wilderness survival system
somebody has their had oh yea mic
this and related to my percent careful editing
i find inspiring know that there are
fish that can plow and birds swim
i'm also an appreciating
the notion that
november of two spots
some know feeling times help on know
hmm
so in your own experience how what are the things that you rely on faith or trust him in terms of when you decide what animal
know him
a monkey and a buddhist robe was still a monkey
i don't wanna be a monkey but
what
i'm monkey around a lot
and and that's the best a hand you're dealt
it's one of them
in the whole game of poker game with than one chance you get a different hand but that's what what and i'd rather be a leopard
something but i think i'm a kind of monkey when you look i know that it and it's okay no but it wasn't okay for a long time
i made a lot of people miserable lot of people miserable in my life because it was an okay
so you've come from that place because you you you have a pet can swing from branch the branch now and say that's what i do
yeah
there's no time is running out for me you know that that's part of it you know as you get older you know that your days are numbered so you just going to be what you are because you might not be here tomorrow i'm gonna join me in a monkey if that's what i am right now if i hadn't turned into a labrador tiger overnight watch up
ha by the probably won't happen to own terms of directing the play yet ambition right
the most direct that's going to be the mercury
it you must let me on your choice
well i mean i'm using that notify the want to put too fine a point on it but
whatever i am i can say no when would who will step for what identity will what's up personality know what new ants will come forward and exhibit itself
when i finally put on the direct israel who knows you know and that's when the reasons we should do it i should do it to find out
maybe i'll get my own share with my name on it
a megaphone
damn david w griffith
but that's as an entrant yeah kind of is the let me say this is air
the major be situation or request that's made of me
ah where you'll say wow
leopard can't change it's spots oh of course
how much she's noticed
i mean i've said many times to people know
it's not who i am i'm not to do that what we're not going to do that anymore i'm not don't ask me i'm not going to be on the practice committee
and i said they aim to my window by when i came here when i came back from tassajara and had an apprentice committees and means less melendez said i'm not going to be on 'em gimme a break you know now i can do it again but for a long time i could say no but years before that i wouldn't say no i'd say yes and then just exude
resentment
you know and so now i can say yes and then hardly give myself to it difficult as it may be
yes to answer i was just i actually have anthem expression is there some part of your style
you think bassett change some credit here i to take that
well you remember where i started out saying a couple of days ago i said i had this revelation that i've always been here
and what makes me think i won't but that there's no here or i that i could ever get hold of in india there but that feeling feeling that you had when you're five when your ten when you're twenty when you're sixty
that i felt when i'm twenty but my fecal clump clump club now
the else is changing but they're feeling the subjective sense south sense
what is that you know we can't find it
i can't find what that is because as soon as i try to express it as an ethics president terms yourself another role playing and all of these words were using but it seems to supersede that are it seems to
two to you know like quicksilver you can't get ahold of it
but but i also said the beginning that we have a certain stance or posture we take in the world and on and berm
we kind of have a predominant learn that one of the maybe one of the six realms
maybe i'm ah i'm not a i'm not an asura i think i blow in the human realm but i'm also an animal
now agreed three well now that feels kind of familiar to me
i'm not not in the hell realm for are always and but lifestyles more greedy and
more and more of i tend to be a fringe person i like people buy them
i'm kind of on the periphery i like on the periphery
and then i can be read in the center like am known to have very good with it you're happy but i don't want to be in the on on to get back and be anonymous they sit as an aquarium trade i know
that's just another identity and an inquiry he had another war
i love for so much of it
i'm not telling
a is to andrea
yesterday or the why part
our no art art
or not
right now
but you know i also somebody once said and we want to turn your life into a work of art and that contest with suzuki roshi and that's one of these these remarkable human beings are their whole life is the work of art
and that's the wonderful aspect of it you know we can turn our lives in the workers that works of art for a moment to moment
and we do actually kind of what we actually you
did you go somewhere the hand of you yes yesterday
it's amazing to me different
it's sort of have seen so come to me because i was wanting to ask asking that the experience you had gotten a scrub lists to the games that since it hadn't need for it
are you able to say my questions really bad i did to men
am i going to say is that experience been
was
before suit
odg have some kind of experience which she the inclines me oh i think of
well the only way i can answer that is partly theoretically important part exponentially theoretically is probably that all experience happens some instantaneous fragment just before you know the thought process sense and that's how the mind works but this came more as of
flash and then immediately was put into almost instantaneously took the form of the expression i use i have been here forever what makes me think i'm not going to be even though it subsequently i also said what is this i what is this here and what is this forever i can't find any part
of that and yet and yet that's how it came but the feeling of that was a color are molded dimension or was very totally expansive feeling and absolutely knew it to be true
but
couldn't say it other than the website and it preceded it seemed to proceed language he was prior to the condition of the arising the words
because he said that
that which preceded the last words that seats yeah listen to sit on your christians bomb instead of on that
the ever more than just a tiny flesh it will not not changing the purely for their people that live in that dimension on the time
barely i have met so many but i think there are go to india in as were alone they seem to live in a kind of
john state
but that's not our practice really a practice is just to get down in a kitchen sink level
and see that is you know perfection of wisdom
which is harder in a way yeah getting into a state where it can manifest as later on your hand or something by thought
was sri said to him
he said thomas and see psychic tricks
i was some respectfully referring to the no no no no no i know that i understand thank you thank you that i can answer other than i do the why i talk about it further gets away
which is another phenomenon we must have noticed anyway it's now ten thirty and we have to go sit so
thank you very much
hey