*transcript generated by AI

All right.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Glad you were able to make it today.

Yes, me too.

And thank you to all of you who come pretty much all the time.

It’s fun to have a solid crew to do this practice with because that really enlightens it, you know.

On the one hand, Zen is a very individual path, because no one can do it for us, just like no one can drink our tea for us, no one can sit in Zazen for us.

But there’s something that happens when we practice in community.

It just gives a little extra strength and vibrance to this individual path that we’re on.

So, normally this time I do like, I don’t know, like a seven to 10-ish minute kind of like teaching or exposition of some aspect of what we do here in Zen and what it all means.

But today it feels like it’d be, I’d like to just make it a general Q&A session.

Obviously, you get first dibs.

If you have any questions about anything that was going on or what we’re doing or meditation or something like that, I’d like to invite you to go ahead and ask them.

We can do that.

Put me on the spot.

Not on purpose.

If you have something, go ahead.

If not, we can open it up to everyone.

I would just like to listen and hear what other thoughts are and just get a better understanding of this morning.

Okay.

Great.

I’ll just listen to all of you.

Well, if anything comes up specifically, feel free to jump in.

I will.

So, for those of you who have been doing this for a while, would any of you like to share what you know about what we’re doing this morning?

Or ask me a question that would help you understand what we’re doing this morning that will, by extension, help understand what we’re doing this morning?

Oh, nobody knows.

Not knowing is one thing.

Not talking is the other.

There it is.

It’s interesting, usually.

Oh, Robin has also opened her mic.

It’s interesting because usually I love to talk a lot.

Currently, we did Zen practice as you offering it at Open Door Zen.

I always appreciate when someone new is coming because then you give some little pointers.

So, for example, the way you explain the meditation practice or the precursor, like our morning service, what is this about?

Why are we doing this before we sit?

Why do we walk between the morning service and the sitting?

Why do we do the Qigong practice?

Why is it important to be with others in Sangha or on this individual path?

So, it’s so important to listen carefully.

Just be open to what is said.

Beautifully said, Zenshen.

I’m not sure it will be very helpful for explaining what we’re doing here, but a question that’s been rattling around in my mind is I would like to hear you explain from your perspective the difference between sympathy and compassion.

All right.

All right.

That’s a juicy one.

So, just for a little bit of context, one of the things that makes…

So, there’s multiple branches of Buddhism, and one of the things that makes our branch of Buddhism or is really central to our branch of practice is this idea of compassion.

And, you know, exploring what does compassion really mean to us is kind of essential to understanding what is our spiritual practice.

And there are other branches of Buddhism.

Every branch will have some teaching on compassion in it, right?

But for us, it’s like the whole reason.

But everything that we do is kind of built on this idea of compassion, which is the twin, you know, that’s the other wing to wisdom.

And we say that you need both wings to fly, wisdom and compassion.

And in our Western context, compassion is often just that it just has a lot of means, you know.

And so I would imagine that this question comes from that and the nuance between sympathy and compassion is kind of exploring what is Zen compassion compared to the way that we typically think compassion looks like?

Or what is Zen compassion compared to just simply being sympathetic for somebody?

Right?

Am I on the right track?

So if I start talking about that, I won’t just go so far into the weeds that you’re like, that was not my question.

So.

Compassion in our context is when we step into a moment of interrelating of being with other pieces of existence, full of the knowledge that we’re not separate.

So compassion literally means to suffer with.

And so it’s like, can I be with, for example, can I be with the door when I close it?

And this is a great way to practice.

If I’m truly with the door when I close it, I won’t really want to slam it.

Because like that sends an unnecessary shock through the door.

And is the door alive and doesn’t have feelings?

Who cares?

That’s not the point.

The point is, can I use that as an opportunity to recognize my oneness with the door and to really treat it with the respect of being another aspect of creation?

That is part of my world.

And I’m part of its world.

So compassion is really just stepping into a moment, fully aware that there is no separation between anything.

Which is at the very core of our, our tradition.

Now, sympathy is really interesting because sympathy is an emotive faculty.

Sympathy is when I, as an individual being, look at you and your experience and can feel a sense of.

I get what that feels like.

Right.

So inherent in sympathy is the idea that I’m having my experience and you’re having your experience.

And to be sympathetic to you, I have to open up to what your experience might be like.

And relate to relate that to experiences that I’ve had in my life so that I can be like, wow.

Oh man, that’s tough.

But that I’m not actually having a tough moment, other than the toughness that I experienced through your emotive.

Right.

And we can also have sympathetic joy.

If somebody is really happy because something good happened, we can be in sympathy with them.

We can start to vibrate at the same frequency as them, like sympathy, sympathetic vibrations.

And this is, again, the idea that we are picking up the experience of something else.

But we are fundamentally separate from that experience.

OK, so sympathy has a little bit more detachment to it than compassion.

We can be very sympathetic and feel absolutely no need to take action, for example.

Right.

Or our sympathy can motivate us to take action.

But compassion will always motivate us to take care of what’s happening.

Now, the interesting thing about compassion motivating us to take care of something is that we aren’t motivated to take care of something because it will help us feel better.

Which is a lot of times what sympathy engenders.

So if we go to a funeral and we see somebody grieving and we feel grieving in ourselves and we’re sympathetic, we’re really paying attention.

A lot of times our effort to console them is really an effort to console ourselves.

If you’re grieving less than all grieve less and I would like to grieve less.

So I’m going to say nice things to you so that you’re not grieving so much in front of me.

There can be a lot of selfishness and sympathy, sympathetic resonance and what we do when we’re motivated by sympathy.

Compassion, on the other hand, would allow for grieving.

In whatever way grieving needs to happen, the compassionate person is the one who just sits there silently and allows you to weep.

And it’s comfortable with that own discomfort in themselves because compassion shows them that this is the time for you to do that.

And it’s not about whether or not that makes me feel uncomfortable.

It’s about this is the appropriate energy flowing through you in the appropriate time and in the appropriate way.

And if I get in the way of that, if I interrupt that, I’m not really helping you.

So that’s that’s one difference or some some nuance.

And there’s another piece here where sympathy, in my experience, when I’m feeling really sympathetic, when I am feeling really sympathetic, you’ll notice that I often say when I am sympathetic or when there is compassion.

I think this is a good way to feel the nuance of the two.

But when I am very sympathetic, I tend to make my decisions based on a very narrow field of consequences.

Is this good for me?

Is this good for the person that I’m in sympathy with?

You know, sometimes I can be brought up a little bit to be like, is this good for this particular subgroup of people?

Or is this good for this particular situation?

You know, in isolation, when there’s compassion and there is oneness, we automatically experience a broadening of perspective.

That says, oh, you know what, this action that I need to take from a place of compassion is going to be really hard on this individual and this individual or this particular group of people.

But in aggregate, it will be kinder.

It will result in less suffering.

It will be more better, including for me.

And sometimes that action is actually really painful for me as an individual and contrary to my own survival instincts, which sympathy would never engender.

Sympathy would always ask me to make myself feel better.

But compassion can say, you know what, it doesn’t matter because in the grand web of life, this is what needs to happen.

For all parties considered to move forward in the best possible way.

So I feel like generally sympathy, we can only be sympathetic in a fairly narrow spectrum because we can only reach that coherence in a very narrow field of vision.

And as we get our perspective broader and experience a greater sense of compassion and oneness, then that field just levels out because everything’s balancing with each other.

And this person’s suffering and this person’s joy kind of level out and our compassion feels much more neutral, which allows for a totally different type of decision making than when we’re in a very narrow sense of sympathetic resonance with a particular situation or individual.

There you go.

Which is part of my group practice is really helpful because we get to drop into that compassionate space.

And as we practice and as there’s more people here, you get to feel the room become one field.

Feel everyone walking in one step.

Feel everyone sitting in one set.

Feel everyone chanting in one chant.

Conduit through which we can release ourselves into that compassionate field.

Yeah.

Yeah.

More than adequate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I’m noticing that now, for me, I feel imbalanced now because we only talked about one way.

So you got our little birdie over here trying to fly with one wing.

So what is wisdom?

How does wisdom put into the equation?

But it’d be okay if I said a few words about that.

Okay.

So.

Wisdom comes into.

So part of what we’re doing when we’re sitting in aliveness as we’re recognizing the nature of reality.

This is what we believe we’re doing.

And the nature of reality is basically in a series of discrete moments that are vibrating one into another as a giant field of energy has this crazy dance with itself.

And there’s lots of more technical ways to talk about that.

But in a way, that’s what it is.

At a material level, it’s talking about the interactions of particles in the quantum field that end up creating our entire universe.

And so in the meditative tradition, that’s kind of what they were exploring by going down in it.

And by tuning into those experiences that we discover through meditation.

One of the big things that we notice is that everything changes.

And everything is part of something else.

And in a way, everything that we experience is kind of an illusion.

Okay, so what that means is that, like, we don’t actually see the chemical structure of this, we don’t actually see the atoms and the molecules and the infinite amount of space in this.

So my sense of touch, and my eyes are fundamentally flawed.

Right, I just have like an interpretive experience that’s useful for me and not die.

That’s really what we experience is kind of an interpretation of reality that has been evolutionary health, I will helpful in an evolutionary way for us to keep existing.

Wisdom tells us that.

That’s great.

It’s very useful, but it’s not really true.

What’s true is that everything is changing your, your perception is very limited according to what you can experience through your sense organs and your life experiences and who you think you are and how your parents or other caregivers raised you and what society says, and all these things shape your experience and it’s all not really true.

It’s all perfectly true to us in our individual sense, but wisdom is saying it’s really not true, and some sort of cosmic absolute sense.

What is true is that everything is changing.

Everything is connected to everything else.

And that if we get confused that something which changes all the time is actually not changing.

Then we suffer.

We have emotional distress.

And so wisdom just asked us to remember that everything is changing, and this vibratory dance of interconnection, and our sense experience is fundamentally flawed.

So that’s wisdom.

Wisdom gives us the capacity to be like wow, this is really awful.

And then compassion reminds us, yeah, it’s really awful we should do something about that.

And wisdom is like, well I don’t really need to.

And compassion is like well yeah you kind of do.

And then you go, yeah, you’re right.

And then you show up.

But this allows us to show up from a place that is kind of like, it doesn’t really need anything to change, so it takes all that grip out of it, it takes all the angst out of it, it takes all the edge off of it.

And it’s more just like, on behalf of the entire cosmos, this needs to be different.

Okay.

And then it doesn’t work out the way that you think it will, but somehow it still works out anyway.

And you get to enjoy this amazing ride that we call life, without all of the trying to make life do what we want.

And so that’s kind of the fruit of Zen practice, is to just be able to show up in our lives and live it without getting too worked up about it.

Because it’s just kind of fun.

Even though it really sometimes doesn’t feel fun.

So there’s the wisdom part.

I’m just waiting if Marie wants something to say or a new participant.

I’m good.

Thank you.

I’ve appreciated your questions.

When I listen to what you say, Bumi, again and again and again, I’m confronted with this challenge of wisdom and compassion, where, like false beliefs, can let me think, oh, this is compassion, can let me think, oh, this is wisdom.

Directly, I’m pointing to, for example, my mom and the way she shows up sometimes and where I really deeply struggle.

What the hell is the part of compassion here?

What the hell is the part of wisdom here?

How do I face some of those situations, especially those when it’s not only her and me involved in a situation, but also others?

I haven’t found that goal, that Zen balance way of living yet.

And it’s really, yeah, it holds me in a space where I think I don’t need to be there.

There is a way to move forward.

But until now, I don’t see it.

I don’t know if you have some words of wisdom or compassion or both.

Well, you can’t actually stand still.

And so it’s just important to remember that each time you face a situation and each time you make a decision, you are moving forward.

And it can feel like we’re just going around in circles.

And we might say that we are.

But as long as we’re paying attention, each time we make a decision and that decision has some sort of outcome and we’re paying attention and we’re learning something, then we’re still going forward.

And, you know, some some lessons we have to learn in this life take a long time and we get pretty beat up before we figure out what it’s trying to teach us.

But that doesn’t mean that we’re making the same mistake over again.

It just means that we haven’t quite uncovered whatever that core nugget is.

And because I know a little bit about the situation with your mom, you know, we have really complex interpersonal relationships.

It’s important to understand that there is no ideal outcome.

A lot of times what we do is we impose an ideal transformation like, oh, only my mom was this way of only I was this way with my mom.

Oh, if only my kids showed up this way or my partner showed up that way or whatever, we create some picture in our mind that we want to strive for.

And that’s good.

We need to do that because without that, we have no direction.

But it’s kind of like, well, I know I want to go that way.

But what we do is we say, I want to go that way, and then we ignore all of the signs that are pushing us in a different direction or saying, well, if you really want to go that way, then you have to start going that way first.

You know, because we get so fixated on our goal and how things should be that we miss all of the signs about how to create that reality or about how our interpretation of what should should happen isn’t quite right.

You know, and so it’s always about coming back to what is right now, based on all the information that I have, what direction do I want to set for myself.

Now I have my starting point and my destination.

What’s my first step.

Well, it might be left, it might be right, it might be back, it might be forward, it might be anywhere in between, who knows.

And then once you take your first step, you’re in a different position.

And then you get to check again.

Is that still the right destination.

What steps do I need to take next.

Oh, I just walked off a cliff.

Okay, fortunately, reset.

Okay, now I’m at the bottom of the cliff.

Now what do I do.

Right.

It’s just a constant inquiry.

What is where do I want to go.

What’s my next step.

Not what’s the entire route.

We can’t know that just what’s my next step.

And then check it out again.

It’s helpful when we have ongoing difficult situations, but the process is the same, regardless.

Which is also part of Zen practice.

So what we do on Sunday mornings is a micro experience of that.

Right.

Well, I enter the center when I find my seat and get myself set.

Okay, the clackers clack.

What do I do, I say this part.

Right.

Oh, the bells are ringing.

What do I do, I do this.

Oh, now we’re walking in Kim and what am I doing, I’m doing this right it’s a constant check of, am I here doing the thing that I’m supposed to be doing, according to what the destination is, or am I off somewhere else doing something else.

So we get to practice that over and over.

So, thank you all very much.

That’s our Dharma discussion for today.

The post Sympathy? Compassion? Wisdom? appeared first on Dan Rotnem.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning, good morning.

Welcome to another Sunday practice period.

A little bit like samsara, isn’t it?

It just keeps coming around.

It just keeps coming and going around.

We have notes.

Yeah, so today I brought a verse 31 that I’m working on to release tomorrow.

Verse 31 is really interesting.

It’s called Stop Forcing, or at least that’s how I’m titling it, which is a pretty faithful rendition of the characters.

But it’s just been such a hot topic.

It’s just such a hot topic that we’ve talked about over and over again in this forum.

Bailey is currently writing an essay on something very related as part of his training.

And it’s the idea of how does force fit into a context of nonviolence?

What do we make of this seeming paradox?

And, you know, this verse is one of the ones that normally ends up making a very strong statement around if you’re a weaver of the way, you just don’t.

Yeah.

And I was like, the rest of this text is not like that.

It’s all about harmonization of opposites and inclusion and doing what is necessary with the least amount of disturbance, but always doing what is necessary and showing up.

There’s no sense of escapism or spiritual bypassing that I’ve seen anywhere in this text.

So how does this verse get off on saying that if you’re a weaver of the way, you don’t use force?

Well, how does that make sense?

It never made sense to me.

So I’m going through this project and looking up all of the ancient manuscripts that I can find and comparing different versions of them.

One commenter was like, I’m not even sure this one belongs in here.

This is super weird.

Can’t make sense of another.

But it doesn’t make sense.

That view is kind of untenable because the oldest known version of the manuscript has a version of this verse in it.

So the one that’s from 400 BCE has this included.

Then, you know, we kind of like need to treat it as part of the text.

Even if it doesn’t necessarily make sense to us.

So then as I was comparing the versions, there’s this line in this line that had been so troublesome, didn’t actually show up until the manuscript that was written around 250 CE.

And so the oldest version doesn’t have this in it at all, but a middle version, which is probably an expanded of the original based on the oral tradition before it became codified by this guy, I won’t be in about 250 has a line that’s very different.

And instead of saying instead of saying.

Instead of saying one who possesses the way it does not use it, it being forced.

It says, therefore, desire does not claim it.

It’s being forced.

And in a way, you could say, like, oh, that’s a reasonable interchange of words.

But in the total context of the verse, I’m going to read it in a moment.

It like completely revolutionizes the way the data Jane includes force and its idea.

So this is my translation.

Excellent force is a tool of ill omen.

Phenomenon dislikes it.

Therefore, desire does not claim it.

The wise claim to cherish the left.

The forceful cherish the right.

The ominous tool of force is not the wisest method.

The wise only use it as needed, favoring a sharp strike.

It’s not a clear departure from the ancient manuscripts to the most modern.

There is a different word in there.

That completely changes me.

Coercion is not commendable.

One who considers coercion praiseworthy is one who delights in violence.

One who delights in violence is unable to succeed in the world.

Prosperity favors the left.

Ferocity favors the right.

At a funeral, the first mate is on the left and the captain is on the right.

Mass destruction, a flood of bitter tears.

Victory is a right of mourning.

I’m not going to get in.

I mean, the whole commentary will be out tomorrow, so I’m not going to get into that.

But what I am going to use this for is a launching point for our inquiry, our ongoing inquiry into how do we relate to the sort of wisdom.

Manjushri, right?

We talk about Manjushri’s wisdom all the time, the sword that cuts and Zen being the cut, right?

But then we’re all like, Kansai-on, that’s my favorite.

Yay, green tar.

Compassion, compassion.

And we get really lopsided in this view, and it becomes really difficult to reconcile.

It becomes really difficult to reconcile where is force necessary, where is coercion necessary, where is force violent, where is force appropriate.

This is an ongoing inquiry.

So what distinguishes force from violence?

Are we looking for an answer?

I’m leaving space for us to think about it.

Fair enough.

Yeah.

And that can be part of our discussion today.

Absolutely.

But the key here, though, the thing that really blew my mind by looking at the older versions of this text was a clear indication by the Tao Te Ching that it is not a treatise of pacifism.

It is saying that if you need to cut, cut expediently, cut with the least amount of damage possible, cut immediately so that the tumor doesn’t grow into something that requires greater force.

And just because we move through the world with desire, if we remember verse one, if you’ve been following this project all time, in verse one, it says something like become desireless and experience the mysteries of life through desire.

Behold its frontiers.

Right.

So desirelessness allows us to touch into the absolute perfection of the moment as it is and the pure mystery of life unfolding.

That’s what happens when we become desire less.

But in that state, we don’t go live life.

So desire is what drives us to explore life’s multicolored, multifaceted, exquisite beauty and all of its diversity.

So we must hold desire in the context of desirelessness.

Right.

And so be driven to explore and live this life as intentional agents, as weavers of the way.

Desire does not claim force for itself.

Desire is not forcefulness.

Our right to explore life and to get what we need out of life and to be intentional agents of life does not give us a right to force our egotistic desires on life in order for life to meet our egotistical needs.

Right.

So whatever force is, it’s not that because that would be violence.

And since this happened to be a topic that shows up all the time in this little group, when we’re talking about how do we navigate our circumstances, what are we doing?

It just seemed like, wow, I can’t not share that.

Plus, it blew my mind when I was working on it.

And I was just like, oh, you know, like, oh, that makes sense.

No.

Right.

And so I got really excited.

Right.

There we are this morning.

I look forward to hearing what emerges from our conversation today.

Defer to those on the webcam.

Let’s open with the online folks, because it’s harder for you to jump in and interrupt us than it is for us to jump in and interrupt you.

During my process of writing this paper, I also was playing with the idea of like, what is the difference between force and violence?

Like, what is what is really justifiable?

And I think you pretty much said it there.

It’s like, if you’re kind of going with the river, right, and you’re moving a rock that is disturbing the very laminar flow of the river, you know, like if there is someone who is going very against, like, the natural kind of way and the flow of life and these things, and they are disturbing people who are just trying to live their life, then I would think that is the time.

To use force rather than violence.

I feel violence would be more if you were imposing your own, your own view of the matter, like your own, your own personal natural flow.

If you were imposing that on other people, and then changing them or changing different circumstances based on that, I would consider that violence then.

I have a slightly different view.

I would say it’s possible to have, like, the same action scene from the outside.

But because I have a different intention, the action is once violent, forceful, and at the other time, just this.

So I’m not, I’m not quite sure, Bailey, if I understand your difference between what you just said to bring that one, another person’s own intention, the energy into the action.

I mean, yeah, what you said is exactly what I meant.

It was probably said a little bit better.

But, yeah, the base assumption is that the intention is like the biggest thing, the biggest differentiator between them.

Yeah.

Just to finish my thought I see Robin coming.

And what’s also interesting when you experience this difference on your own action.

When it’s hard to do something, when there is a force in it, then, at least for me, the experience is that there is more tension, that there is more effort to whatever wants to be done is done.

Without that, it just flows.

There we go.

Computer’s not cooperating.

I was thinking about how the implementation of a quick strike, that that’s compassionate.

Whereas the use of force, of pushing, that continues a cycle of, I’m not expressing myself well, it continues a cycle of potential suffering.

Because it just keeps building and rolling.

Whereas off, it’s done.

And, yeah, I guess that’s all I have.

Except for Bailey, I love that you were talking about the rock in the river.

Because there’s a little plaque that hangs on my parents’ fireplace that says if a rock is too heavy to lift, kiss it and leave it.

And that’s that same kind of, you know, strike could be a kiss and a walk away.

I’d like to hop in a little bit on what Zinchen was saying, with just a quick word that this is one of the beautiful things about our practice is when we’re really paying attention, we can feel the difference in how people respond to us.

We can feel the difference in how people respond to us.

And we can know for somehow have been coercive and not just the appropriately applying force when there’s resistance.

Right, when we when we are truly coming from a place of like what I the force that I am applying to the situation, the cut that I’m applying to the situation can only be responded to without.

Yeah.

Okay.

Right.

That’s kind of how we know that we didn’t bring violence and coercion, because, like it says phenomenon just like it.

And this is really huge in our internal space when we’re working with our own emotions and stuff like when we’re forcing our emotional spectrum or forcing our thoughts we make them stronger and worse they push against us.

And when we’re cleaner and we’re just like, no, not that, then they just kind of.

All right.

But this this, though, the response we get to the stimulus we put into the world is always a great indicator about the place that we’re coming from, when we do the thing.

And that’s I think always a fascinating thought experiment to play out to check ourselves in this in this space.

Before Ryan starts talking.

Now I was just going to say that this is very interesting.

And I really appreciate what everyone has said up to this point about it.

And I’m just going to, I’m just going to sit with it and continue to listen.

So, Ryan, go for it.

I think the big takeaway that I have personally, I think, is something we’ve touched on before.

It’s just intention.

That’s the key that whether or not it’s force, degrees of force, I mean, force can be something.

It’s just imposing your will on whatever else that may be in, you know, however gentle or however, you know, less gentle that may be, whether or not it’s in parenting, relationships, work, what have you.

It’s the intention behind it that makes the difference.

And that translates clear up into violence.

Not all violence is bad.

Inherently, sometimes it’s very necessary, but it’s the intention behind it.

That’s where that swift cut comes in.

If you look at it from a martial arts standpoint, from a military standpoint, no one teaches like, hey, this is how you can make them suffer the most.

It’s well, some people, some people.

But it’s usually this is the most efficient and fastest way for this to be done.

And there’s a bit of, I don’t want to call it humanity in that, but that is kind of the humane way to do it.

And so sometimes if violence is necessary, what’s the intention behind it?

Is the intention I’m defending myself or my family?

Okay, it’s justified.

Is it?

Oh, well, I don’t like that guy.

He, I don’t know, honked at me in a traffic light.

So now I’m going to open my car door and beat him up.

Okay, you’re a jerk.

Like that’s, that’s completely unnecessary.

So intention, I think, is the key takeaway, at least in my view, is that what’s the intention behind it?

And if you have to get to an extreme use of force and or violence, can you still do so compassionately or as compassionately as possible?

Hey, I’m going to end this as quickly as I possibly can, because you put me in the situation.

I have to be here because you put me here.

Fine.

Still doesn’t mean you have to, like, kick the guy in the face 15 times in the process.

Like, end it.

Move on.

And, you know, from a personal standpoint, like from a.

Move on from a, from a personal standpoint, don’t dwell on the thought, like, oh, my God, somebody broke into my house and endangered my family and this whole thing.

Yep, it happened.

It could happen again.

It could not.

It could not happen the first time.

It is what it is.

Move on.

But that’s just, I don’t know.

It’s kind of where I come from.

Intention is the key takeaway there.

Why is it happening?

Why are you responding in the way that you are?

Even down to small interpersonal relationships with family, friends, children, you know.

What’s the intention behind it?

I know you brought up a good point on, you get a really good sense of where you’re coming from by the reactions you receive to whatever use of force that happened to be as small or as large as it is.

Thank you.

Yeah, and one of the things that I was really interesting about this verse was that even though it condones the sharp strike.

Thank you.

Yeah, and one of the things that I was really interesting about this verse was that even though it condones the sharp strike.

And it places roles in accordance with force and passivity.

It ends with the idea that victory is a morning ritual.

So it’s like, even though, even though we allow for the idea that it can be necessary to cut.

If we are going to cut we’re going to cut with the least, the least degree of effective force.

Now this is a really interesting thing to like what is the least degree of effective force.

You know, for me it’s like what do I think I need plus about 10%, because it is far better to go, what do I think I need less 10% and have to cut again than it is to just do just, just make sure, just make sure it’s done right do it one time.

It might be a slightly bigger wound, like when I’ve had procedures, they make sure that they make the incision big enough to do what they need to do.

So they don’t got to cut again, you know, and I think that’s a good lesson for us.

But the point is that even in that it is a sorrowful moment.

When life was disharmonious enough to require that of us.

And I think that’s a really powerful and poignant lesson for us to take into our lives is that we need to be capable of cutting.

And we need to recognize that cutting is a sad thing.

That makes that brings the necessary balance to it.

And it also allows, you know, one of my, one of my personal aphorisms is that you can’t choose to be non violent, if you aren’t capable of violence.

So that’s a whole interesting thought experiment.

I garden warrior.

Yeah.

It also reminds me on a principle of not doing.

I don’t know how much you see here the same in it.

It’s a really challenging context.

It’s a really challenging word in action, the verse, y i n hyphen a c t i o n I think was verse 29 specifically dealt with way.

It’s a, it’s a really interesting concept.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that’s this, this, that this not doing isn’t isn’t being passive.

So, so for me this is very similar to having a violent force, or just being instead of doing.

I’m not so.

So, so that we, so why I bring this in, so that we not.

For me, I don’t need to think of something violent.

It can be just any action.

Yeah.

No, that’s a great point.

I’m not quite following.

That’s a phenomenal.

If I’m following correctly.

The choice of non action is still a choice.

So, choosing to not react in a forceful or take it clear to the extreme violent manner isn’t being passive and just letting the situation occur.

It’s making a conscious choice to not react in a forceful or violent way and that’s that’s not being a path or it’s not being passive to the situation it’s still reacting to the situation but choosing to react in a non forceful non violent way and to me personally honestly now that I sit with that for a second.

Sometimes that’s the harder choice to make is to be like I’m not going to react forcefully to this, or I’m not going to just passively let this happen I’m going to consciously choose to not have a forceful.

You know, my kid is driving me nuts.

I’m going to consciously choose to not yell at them.

That’s not just me letting them get what they want that’s me consciously choosing to not react in a forceful manner.

Sometimes that’s the hardest thing to do essentially I hope that I was following that in the way that you meant it.

And if I wasn’t very much for putting that that little spark in the back of my head, either way, so I also see baby and yes it was wonderful to listen to you to bring a new aspect into what I said it was not really what I wanted to say but great.

What you made out of it.

No, it’s more this, the, the, the natural next action comes, you don’t need to think about you to just do it like the river flows and the river.

That was my idea but yours is perfect.

And I guess Bailey want to say something.

I was curious, during all that it kind of brought up like is sometimes not taking an action violent.

I’m choosing to not do so.

Okay.

Yeah, we need to wrap for time today but the notion of you don’t need to think the next step presents itself.

is really interesting.

Yeah, like that was a deep philosophical inquiry and deep spiritual inquiry.

And I find that actually for most of us we can’t do that.

I think it’s the ideal.

The ideal is that what presents itself as the spontaneous next step is aligned with all of our highest values.

I’ve seen too many people think that they get it.

And they just trust themselves to move through life, that they just act spontaneously based on what their arising notion of what is right is.

And they’re not the kind of people that you want to be around, because they’re not holding that space of inquiry and choice.

And I think that, you know, maybe some of us through diligent practice by the time we’re like 85 will be able to live a full day without having to make conscious choices because whatever comes out is just fricking awesome aligned with.

Until then, I strongly encourage us to keep our faculty of choice very firmly in that space between stimulus and response.

I appreciate the ideal of it is what I’m personally striving for.

I just don’t know that I quite trust myself to do.

No.

One day, one day.

One day, that’s why we’re here together, so that we can all celebrate each other on that day we can send them a group message and be like, I just had a day.

I didn’t make any choices it was spontaneously perfect as it was, and we can all be like, whoo, whoo.

But I mean, think about it, isn’t that the point is the point why we’re here.

Yeah.

So, yeah, yeah, that’s a great way to end.

All right, y’all.

We have the time to do our closing check in.

The post Force, Violence and Skillful Means? appeared first on Dan Rotnem.

*transcript generated by AI

morning.

Thanks for joining us today.

I got to practice being human so many times.

It’s quite delightful.

Yeah, I found my favorite was clicking the wrong button to start the meeting this morning.

You know, and then watching myself go, Oh, man, nobody’s here.

Mom said she was coming.

Can she not find the link even though it’s right on the website?

Gosh.

Oh, wait, man, you’re an idiot.

So that’s particularly delightful, right?

So it’s always good to look for moments like that when we can feel ourselves be selves.

Right?

Because when we can feel ourselves being a self, and we don’t have to take ourselves very seriously, because we know it’s insane.

And if we can laugh at our own insanity, then it loses its grip on us.

And when it loses its grip on us, then we get to really make choices about what type of insanity we’re going to bring into the world.

So we can bring an insanity that’s full of love and integrity, and passion and desire and a sincere hope for the well being of all humanity and altruism and kindness.

Now people generally prefer that we bring that kind of insanity forward.

But we can also choose to bring other forms of insanity forward.

Perfectly fine.

There may be days where the insanity that you need to bring forward is full of rage and righteous indignation and difficult phone calls and a capacity to hold people accountable and to cut.

This is another kind of insanity that has a lot of value.

There are other forms of insanity that we like to bring forward like when we like to let our inner child that made decisions about things like however many years ago continue to make decisions for us today.

That’s the kind of insanity that we generally frown upon, right?

That’s the one that we’re typically here trying to not do, you know, but you’re going to do it anyway.

Because you don’t know all the decisions your child made.

So you don’t know when you’re making a childish decision and when you’re making a grownup decision, until you stop and look and see whether or not that’s the insanity that you want to bring forward.

And so the first step is always a moment of man, I’m fucking crazy.

That’s always the first step.

Because it’s from this place, this place where we get to step into a love of life, into the joy of being alive, into the joy of having the capacity to be insane, that we get to start making choices.

And that’s the ultimate power.

That’s when we regain our sobriety.

That’s when we claim the aspect of it, which is divine, which means that we are a proactive creator of our reality, instead of an animal responding to life circumstances in order to survive.

That’s the shift.

That’s the moment.

And in honor and respect for the last call, where I said today would be focused more on practice methodology, and idea of a zero point or an infinite spaciousness and what do you do and when new people come in, you know, telling them to focus really hard and do the concentration practice feels really bad because they suck at it.

But everyone can be told to just like just sit and then everyone feels like they’re super good at meditating, right?

And then they want to come back because they got to sit there and daydream for a half hour and they feel really happy.

Yeah.

And so it’s like, well, what’s the what’s the role of our practice?

Like, what are we doing?

You know, so on one hand, skillful means, right?

If somebody comes in and like, man, concentration is really hard for me, I’ve never had to concentrate in my entire life, except for when I was like, demanded to buy a school project, and I hated it.

Right?

Well, then you say, you know what, how about you just sit there?

You know, just just sit there.

Just relax.

There’s no rules here.

This is then you don’t have rules.

And then one day they realize, but you do in a ritual form.

That’s the exact same every time and you bow a certain way every time when you mean you don’t have rules.

Clearly, you have lots of rules.

Oh, yeah, that’s true.

You do.

You have lots of rules.

And there’s actually really strict rules on how you meditate to.

Well, what are those?

You don’t let your mind wander.

You cut off your internal narrative by saying no, stay here now.

That sounds so harsh.

Yeah, it is.

Because the mind that wanders is a fucking idiot.

Right?

And so we want to be a different kind of insanity.

We want to be the insanity that gets to show up in the world on purpose as a divine creator calling forward truth and love and integrity.

And how do we do that?

And this lineage we penetrate and abide.

That’s Jimbo’s language.

It’s very much not an accurate translation of the original term that has a lot of Jimbo quality to it.

But seriously, his teaching here is actually really remarkable because the original term in Japanese is kika onza.

And in Chinese, it’s huijia wenzu.

And what these four characters mean is to return home and warmly abide, return home and warmly abide, which is a beautiful idea, right?

We’re out traveling, we’re travelers on the road, we’re lost on the path, or the prodigal son who doesn’t know how rich they are.

All we have to do is get home and realize who we are and all the resources we have available to us.

And then we just get to like, relax and chill out in our favorite place to enjoy our favorite window seat, the comforts of our own bed.

Right?

So this this idea of returning home and warmly abiding really well encapsulates the purpose of meditation.

But what it doesn’t do is it doesn’t bring forward the energy required for returning home for me.

And that’s where Jimbo’s teaching I think really hit it, penetrate, and abide.

Right?

Returning home, like sometimes that’s an ordeal.

Has anyone ever done international travel?

And you get delayed and your flights are canceled.

And all of a sudden you’re renting a car to drive to a different airport to get on another plane that’s also delayed.

So then you’re changing your flight, you’re maxing out your credit card, and you’re bargaining with somebody else to give up their seat, you know, and you’re like stealing people’s identities, and you’re like kicking in doors.

You don’t sleep in the airport in Shanghai for five days, all that kind of stuff, right?

You know, you’re trying not to get your stuff stolen, because it’s creepy, but you need sleep, right?

All that stuff.

Returning home is a process that requires a massive amount of conviction, and a sincere desire to get home.

And a plan that constantly evolves according to your changing circumstances.

Right?

So returning home is not like, you know, you’re out on your patio, and you want to go inside.

When we come to this practice, we’re lost.

I’ve never met anyone who came to Zen already, warmly abiding at home.

If you’re already warmly abiding at home, why would you do this?

And so this is the vehicle that allows us to get home.

And it brings brings the brings the I will get home.

I will get home.

I will.

Right?

So that I can relax so that I can be safe so that I can live my life as an abider.

Right?

As one who is resting comfortably in the truth that there’s nothing to seek.

We’re infinitely resourced.

We are healthy and hail.

And we get to manifest whatever kind of insanity we so desire, regardless of whatever life has dealt us up to this point.

That’s it.

Thank you.

Managed to leave about 15 ish minutes for discussion.

So whatever was alive, be it related to the talk or not, you’re welcome to bring it forward.

And just because we have the dynamic with online and in person, let’s make sure we open for space for anyone online to speak first.

We’re good now, Michael, we can hear you.

Okay.

So, yeah, I will.

I really like this notion of what the manifesting of our insanity, what that looks like, and rather than being a kind of pure, perfect, well behaved, continually person.

And it’s kind of that allowing things to flow through you and me and allowing that to manifest.

So very provocative, very, you know, take the risk and express yourself.

Is this what you’re suggesting?

To an extent, yeah.

It’s more like, so it’s like, how do we want to show up?

And sometimes we want to show up like a jerk.

Right?

And then we have to have an extra pause in there to just go, is this the insanity that I really want to bring forward?

Right?

Is this really going to shake the web of the cosmos, and the way that I really think is going to be beneficial.

And so there’s a moment in there when we’re really being creators, that we take that into account.

Right?

And sometimes it’s true.

Sometimes it’s exactly going up to somebody who’s been a total for your whole life and being like, these are for you, buddy.

Right?

Because that shakes the web in the way that is necessary.

Right?

And so if we bind ourselves with this insane idea that we always have to be so kind and so forgiving and so loving and suppress our own needs so that other people can feel safe, right?

Then how can we shake the web in the ways that it needs shook?

We can.

And so it is an openness to all of the different ways that humanity manifests itself, and recognizing that they all have value, and then giving us the responsibility to really look and see, okay, I shook the web this way, what did it do?

That seemed like a good thing or not?

If it did, great, that’s a skillful means.

If it didn’t, great, I should probably do something about that.

Right?

And so it’s that kind of reflective process.

But it is definitely an openness to all of our different ways of being.

Yeah, that clarifies it.

It’s just as we were doing the embodiment practice, it’s just allowing that if that energy gets stuck, just somehow let it go.

Yeah.

And find a willing participant who can receive that wisely and effectively and well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cindy or Robin, anything come up for either of you?

Oh, it’s a lot has come up for me.

I’m not sure if not sure if I really feel like sharing it.

But yeah, oh, a lot in there that I needed to hear and a lot of laughter, a lot of tears and think I’m gonna burn some shit tonight.

Outside of the house, right?

Safe, crazy.

That is the requirement.

A certain amount of a certain amount of responsibility brought to our insanity.

Well, it’s refreshing to know that we don’t have to.

We can acknowledge those unsavory parts of ourselves.

But it’s also good to know that we need to examine that before we act upon it.

And on how we respond to those moments of insanity.

Sometimes you do have to say things that you don’t want to say, or be present in a way that’s unnatural.

So to have difficult conversations.

Instead of putting all this pressure on ourselves, to always respond in kindness is not always appropriate for the situation that we’re going in.

That is what I’m getting out of this conversation.

I would say appropriate is the right word.

But sometimes we have to do the uncomfortable things to make things whole.

That’s what I’m getting.

Like that Instagram t shirt.

Sometimes I do things so we can Oh, yeah, I love the t shirts.

That would be a good t shirt.

Yeah.

We’re all looking at me uncomfortably now.

This is actually kind of funny.

I didn’t plan this.

So my my Dharma talks are never pre scripted or pre decided.

Like I ring the bell and I start talking and so you know, it’s going anyway.

But we’re bailing out we’re just having a going anyway.

But we’re bailing out we’re just having a conversation.

A huge part of his training is me making him deeply uncomfortable repeatedly over and over again and increasingly extreme ways and allowing to learn how to function increasing levels of discomfort and become immune to things like embarrassment and self abdication and, and, you know, deconstructing social mores and you know, all these types of things.

And so it’s interesting that this conversation ended up leading to this point.

Because, yeah, that’s, that’s a huge part of the training relates to be to learn how to be uncomfortable productively.

Most of us are uncomfortable, very unproductively.

So how do you uncomfortable productively?

That’s a really fun experiment.

Well, Dan, what do you have to say about that?

I think Ryan was about to say something.

And I’m sure he shares some wisdom on becoming uncomfortable production.

You know, any training in that at all.

I think my whole mindset, my what’s going on in the back of my head is I’m listening to everything is really the why behind it.

So, you know, if we want to talk about what type of insanity, you know, sometimes it sometimes isn’t that sometimes it does involve like a Hey, but that’s the outward.

This is what I’m focused on.

And behind that is okay, like, am I flipping?

But why is that?

Am I flipping it?

The bird is a reactionary thing?

Is it Hey, whatever you want to say there, as a reactionary thing to something was done?

Or is it Hey, I need to do this because there’s XYZ history there.

And this is me just going, you know, I’m done with you.

I’m done.

I’m not doing it a happening, whatever.

And is it done from a place of malice?

Is it done from a place of healing?

Is it done from a place of, I don’t know, just felt like what I felt like doing in the in the instant.

And if you can figure out where you’re coming from, with each of those actions, even though the outward appearance of that action may not be so pleasant.

The intention behind it may be different than its outward appearance.

And so that’s a big thing for like, I mean, I can recall, you know, an argument, a rather heated argument with my wife, that ended up a little reactionary on my part, and wasn’t handled in the most observant and compassionate of ways.

And I look at that, like, oh, yeah, you you botched that one.

That’s the nicest way I have to put that.

The Scottish part of me wants to use a different word.

But then you look at that and you’re like, you know what, no, I definitely that was not, nope, that was not me at my finest moment.

Okay, well, sorry.

And then you look back at that and go, why did I react that way?

Obviously, there were other people in the vehicle.

So it was embarrassment.

Plus, it was, hey, why are we doing this right now?

And it was the whole thing.

So sometimes the outward reaction, like in the moment, like, well, yeah, that just came out.

Can’t take that back.

Okay, well, let’s work on it.

Let’s have a different conversation.

You know, apologies were stated and like, hey, yeah, won’t be doing that again.

Sorry.

And then you move on.

But you learn from it.

That’s the key.

And you know, definitely should have taken a deeper breath before I opened my fat mouth.

Here we are.

So I think you can apply that same thing to anything.

Like, are we gonna have a nice, easy conversation?

Cool.

We’re gonna have a rather difficult conversation.

I’m going to cut you off completely.

For x, y, z reason, it may not be done maliciously.

It may be done as a hey, we tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried.

This is not working.

So I no longer need you in my life.

Sorry, I made the effort effort was not returned.

Separate ways are bad.

And so I mean, if you want to talk, being productively uncomfortable.

I don’t know, it’s, it’s, there’s not really a really a training manual for that.

And the only the only training manual for that is experience.

And you just get put in increasingly more uncomfortable situation, like whatever that uncomfortable situation may be.

Like, it doesn’t have to be something like, you don’t have to write a unicycle and friggin to do through the middle of town, juggling, whatever, and singing Mary Poppins.

Like that’s not super fun.

I would do a heartbeat not even remotely.

Let’s let’s start next to open doors.

I have no shit.

Can’t write a unicycle, but we’ll figure it out.

But you take that same thing and you put it into whatever the situation happens to be, what makes you uncomfortable as a person?

They’re like, what makes you uncomfortable?

Is it public speaking?

Okay, go speak in public?

Is it?

Hey, I don’t deal well with really difficult conversations.

Hey, guess what?

Go have one.

Guess what?

It’s gonna suck.

You’re gonna be uncomfortable.

That’s the point.

Being productive while uncomfortable doesn’t ease the uncomfortable part.

The uncomfortable part doesn’t go away.

That’s still there.

Doesn’t matter how many times you do it.

The uncomfortable part is still there.

The point is, without facing those uncomfortable situations, you end up stagnant because you go, oh, that makes me uncomfortable and I’m not having that.

And then you just don’t do it.

Because you go, oh, I’m scared to do it because it makes me uncomfortable.

I’m not having it.

Nope.

You can’t make any foreign progress at that point.

So go do the hard thing once and go, well, that’s suck.

That made me super uncomfortable.

But I did the hard thing once.

So once you do the hard thing once, it’s a little easier the next time.

And then a little easier the next time.

It’s still uncomfortable.

And it still sucks.

But yeah, that’s my preaching.

There you go.

I’m gonna wrap that up real quick with two ideas to just feed into your psyche for the week.

All right.

Not involving Brian and a tutu on a unicycle.

So one is there’s a wonderful phrase in Chinese, which means that which is difficult, is that what you cannot yet do, that what you can do is not difficult.

And it points us exactly to the cycle of being willing to do things that are hard, because once we can do them, they aren’t hard anymore.

And so the invitation to practice and live our lives this way.

The second thing is, sometimes when we’re shaking the web, it’s not necessarily because it’s what we need.

Sometimes we have the space to look at the world and say the world needs this behavior from me.

And that can be a very different paradigm by which you make your decision making process.

So sometimes it’s helpful to flip it.

This is how I would like to be in a situation.

But really, what the world needs is this from me, what can I give to the world?

And so both of those things, both directions are important to consider, especially when we’re making big decisions or big shifts in our behavior or anything like that, both directions, right?

Because both are true.

So go ahead, noodle on that.

And for now we are complete with our Dharma discussion.

As always, it’s a great delight to be with everyone.

The post Choosing your Crazy appeared first on Dan Rotnem.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning.

So has anyone ever heard of the idea of Vajra Samadhi, Diamond Samadhi, Adamantine Samadhi, any of these terms?

No?

Fantastic.

Has anyone ever heard the term Anutara Samyak Sambodhi, Complete Unexcelled Perfect Enlightenment?

No?

Okay.

So everyone remember the part in the Heart Sutra where it says something along the lines of, All awakened ones, all compassionate ones rely upon this transcendent wisdom of meditative awareness and therefore experience the most supreme awakening enlightenment.

Hopefully you’ve heard that one.

These are all the same thing.

So these are all different ways of pointing to the same capacity.

And this capacity is Buddha, this awakened one.

It’s not anything other than the capacity to rest in what is.

And in Zen we say that shit all the time, so much so that it’s almost become meaningless.

Because for the huge majority of us, we want to change something about what is.

And so we keep getting reminded, no, our practice is to actually just be with what is.

So what does that mean?

It means that you be with your body, you be with your mind, you be with your emotions, you be with your heart, you be with your circumstances.

You also be with the calm voidness at the center of your being.

You also be with the truth of the interconnected phenomenon that is life.

All of these things simultaneously.

Sometimes your attention flits to pure silence and void and stillness.

Great, absolutely.

Sometimes your attention gets trapped by neurotic obsessive compulsive thought patterns around life issues.

Great, fantastic.

Both are what is.

And so we come to this practice seeking escape from this samsara stuff, which gives us a taste of the nirvana stuff.

And then we just want to stay there, right?

We want to go, man, that calm, peaceful, blissful state of mind is just, that’s what’s real.

The rest of this stuff is just not what is.

That’s just not it.

And this is a trap.

It’s a trap that we all fall into.

It’s a trap that’s actually promoted by a huge percentage of people who talk on the topic of Zen.

And even if they do say, what is, no, be with what is, then implicit in the rest of their dialogue is a not okayness with what is.

They may so heavily emphasize compassion that they refuse to acknowledge that sometimes compassion isn’t what is.

And so then they force compassion into the moment by saying that, oh, what is, is compassionate.

It’s like, if what is, is compassionate, then that doesn’t make any fucking sense to me.

I’m going to swear a lot in this dialogue.

And why is that?

Because the idea of compassion being a certain mode of behavior is by definition, not permanent.

Okay.

So that can’t be it.

Because what we’re talking about is the thing which is beyond everything that changes.

What’s left when everything that’s changes is gone.

That’s our practice.

That’s where we take our seat.

We sit in that permanent, ever present truth within which everything else changes.

Compassion comes and goes.

Especially the idealized notion of how our behavior should or shouldn’t be.

Because the idea that our behavior should be this way or should be that way is completely insane.

If you actually want to take a truth of every moment is different, every moment requires different things.

So what is the compassion that is actually being talked about?

The compassion that’s actually being talked about is to be able to be fundamentally okay to be radically accepting of everything that is, including stuff we don’t like, including people we don’t like.

Because we get to be fundamentally compassionate with they don’t like things either.

I don’t like them.

They don’t like me.

Now we can have compassion because we both don’t like each other.

We can suffer with the dislike.

And it’s okay.

It’s perfectly fine.

I don’t have to like anybody.

Nothing in the Buddha Dharma says you have to like people.

I don’t recall a single line in all of my studies that says you have to like people.

Fuck people.

People are stupid.

Fuck people.

People are stupid.

So then what does that mean?

Well, it means we just show up and we take care of bitterness and we don’t got to worry so much about whether or not we like it.

It doesn’t have to feel a certain way.

It doesn’t have to be a certain way.

And we don’t have to think a certain way.

We don’t have to act a certain way.

We show up, we take care of business.

And what does that mean to take care of business?

You don’t know until your business is in front of you.

If anyone tells you right here in a Dharma talk what it means on how you should show up in your life and how you find this and how you do that and how you navigate these situations, they’re insane.

They don’t get it.

You can only live your life one moment at a time because it’s only real one moment at a time.

All of our practices return to this.

Like we say in the Song of Zazen, all of our practices return to this.

We do lots of good stuff.

We recondition ourselves to be lots of very specific ways because we find them to be generally helpful.

But that doesn’t mean that those ways of being are this.

They all return to this.

It is a huge distinction to make.

All of our precepts, all of our ideals, all of our values, everything that we hold sacred in the world is arbitrary bullshit.

What is real is what’s happening right now.

And how do you take care of it?

Now, in the context of that, it’s really helpful to have a guiding values, a guiding principle, a destination in mind, because we live in time and space and time and space is governed by these things.

So it’s very helpful.

But it’s not the truth that Zen is pointing to.

So anyway, in this Vajrasamadhi, this Prajnaparamita, which I’ve been talking about the whole time, whether you connected the two or not, now I’m connecting them for you.

Everything that I just said is an expression of what it means to view the world from Vajrasamadhi, Prajnaparamita, the Great Wisdom Heart Sutra, all of these things.

So in the Vajrasamadhi Sutra, which I’m reading for the first time and finding completely delightful, I have a lot left to go and chew on, but he talks about Paramitas.

I’m going to do this fairly quickly, because I want to get to discussion.

But I’m also think that it’s really critical that you all hear this.

Who thinks of Dhanaparamita as charity in a sense of like, giving things freely and not being selfish and wanting to have open energetic flows of exchange and all that kind of stuff.

Then generally in Dhanaparamita.

Okay, so that’s one way we practice it.

But actually, this is what it is from Vajrasamadhi.

A Buddha practices Dhanaparamita like this.

If a person forsakes desires, their mind will be always pure.

Through their purity and speech and skillful means, they benefit themselves and others.

This is Dhanaparamita.

This is a perfection charity.

So what does that mean?

It means that through a pure consciousness, a consciousness that is no longer attached to material gain, status, fame, shame, any of those things that drive our regular forms of behavior, we can actually be fully present to what is and show up according to what is needed.

That is dana.

Dana is being so void of self interest that in the moment, which includes your own self interest, you show up.

It has nothing to do with giving somebody a bell because they don’t have one.

It has nothing to do with volunteering at your local pantry.

That’s not Buddha Dhanaparamita.

Okay, then we have the next one.

With firm determination and constant non-abiding, their mind is pure, untainted.

They do not cling to the three realms of existence.

This is Silaparamita, the perfection of morality.

There’s a few technical terms in here.

All right, so firm determination is like a radical commitment, right?

Absolute commitment to radical acceptance.

Constant non-abiding, that’s like the radical acceptance part.

And what that means is that wherever state we’re in, that’s okay.

We’re not trying to be in a state, getting pushed into some other state, and then trying to abide in the original state or convince ourselves that we should be this way when we’re actually that way or doing any of that stuff.

So a non-abiding mind is just what it is in the moment that it is it, so that the appropriate action can be taken to deal with what is.

Okay, so that’s non-abiding.

In this non-abiding, we are pure and untainted.

What does that mean?

It doesn’t mean that some states are pure and some states are not pure.

It means that if you’re going to be angry, be angry.

Be purely angry.

Don’t taint your anger with shame, violence, greed, ignorance, etc.

Don’t taint your anger.

Just be angry, and you’ll realize a remarkable clarity, and then you show up.

When you’re sad, be freaking sad.

Don’t taint your sadness with a desire to not be sad because then you miss the point of all of the sadness, which is trying to tell you, hey, you need to change this thing in your life.

And you’re like, no, I don’t want to because I should feel happy right now.

I should be okay.

What the fuck?

That doesn’t make any sense.

That’s a corrupted sadness, and then you get confused, and you don’t know what your sadness means, and then you can’t show up and take care of your business.

This is the perfection of morality.

Because we are no longer seeking after some particular state of being, we are capable of showing up objectively in the state that we are.

And therefore, we remain moral, okay?

Taken into sex, which is often untalked about.

If I’m super horny, and I really want to get laid, and I start acting manipulatively because I’m clinging after the resolution of my arousal, well, then guess what?

I’m going to do things that are not moral.

I’m going to manipulate.

I’m going to lie.

I’m going to schmooze.

I’m going to use cheesy pickup lines, right?

If I’m really lost, I might actually use some more coercive means.

But if I’m not actually concerned about whether or not my arousal gets satisfied, then when it doesn’t, that’s fine.

And when it does, that’s great.

And I can do so with mutual love and respect and clarity and representation of two beings coming together in a sacred union.

And that is infinitely more fulfilling than just a release.

Cultivating the practices relating to the various aspects of the void and extricating themselves from all the fetters, they are not attached to anything.

They calm and silence the three karmic formations, which are body, speech, and mind, and do not abide in either body or mind.

This is the perfection of patience, samti parmita.

So this is where it gets really critical.

We have to cultivate practices that show us the other side of reality that is nirvanic, blissful, pure, still consciousness, in order to have the space we need to cut off sloth and torpor, conceit, anger, restlessness, and doubt, right?

We cannot cut off those fetters from within the mind, which creates those fetters.

So we have to train ourselves to be able to move into a different state of mind so we can unpack all of those sankharas, those deep unconscious conditioning patterns, from outside of them.

It’s like trying to fix your roof while you’re on the inside of the house.

You can’t do it.

You’ve got to get out of the house to fix your roof, right?

Or the basement is probably a better metaphor, whatever, okay?

But this is the perfection of patience, because we abide in neither body nor mind.

Abiding in neither body or mind means that when our body is freaking out, we don’t let it take over our consciousness.

When our mind is freaking out, we don’t let it take over our consciousness.

We’re not addicted to a body state.

We’re not addicted to a mind state.

When our mind is running rampant, we retreat into our body.

When our body is running rampant, we retreat into our mind.

When both are going crazy, we retreat into pure, blissful consciousness.

And this non-attachment, yes, thank you, thumbs up, this non-attachment to these different states and this capacity to be non-abiding and this disciplined practice of moving into the void is what allows us to seamlessly move throughout the three worlds and not be attached to being in any of the three worlds, but to engage from any of the three worlds as necessary to take care of our business.

Okay, everyone tracking me so far?

I missed, what are the three worlds again?

Oh, the three worlds are desire, form, and formless.

That’s their traditional names, which is really kind of like body, thought, and emotion, and transcendent consciousness.

Good question.

All right, so we’re almost, we’re almost done here.

We got two, oh, we have, we have three left.

We’re halfway there.

Okay.

By leaving all sense objects, forms, these are the things that you perceive through your regular five senses, classifications, and all ego-generating activities, that’s basically all of your thought and self-referential narrative, they overcome views of both non-existence, transcendent, blissful, pure consciousness, and existence, the relative world, and delve deeply into the void of the aggregates and the related ramifications.

Okay, so that’s another technical phrase, which basically means, remember at the beginning of the Heart Sutra, oh my gosh, thoughts, feelings, volitional concepts, and whatever our void of any personal self-nature, blah, blah, blah, whatever the intro is, right?

Okay, so basically what we’re pointing to here is that everything that constitutes your regular mental functioning and your regular experience of reality is a codependent arising phenomenon.

It is a void of its own self-nature, right?

So consciousness arises through the interplay of whatever and physical experience.

Volition arises from the consciousness of self-referential experience and a need to move throughout the world, right?

All these things arise in conjunction.

They’re all made up of different parts.

You aren’t any of the things that constitute a you.

They’re just different aspects of how a you actually functions in the world, which is terrifying.

That’s why it’s often called the Heart Attack Sutra, because it basically says that everything that you think you are is not, in essence, anything at all, right?

And this is why this is called the Perfection of Courage, because you basically examine all of your experience, realize that you don’t actually exist, and in that realization, you blow yourself open to the non-abiding state, to the capacity to flip back and forth between formless form, desire worlds.

All of these things become totally okay, because there’s no you that you have to persist, right?

There’s no you that has to persist throughout time and space when you realize that you don’t actually exist at all, and that takes a great deal of courage, right?

But it’s only when you realize this that you’re capable of showing up to take care of your business, because you’re not going to be motivated by personal desires because you don’t exist.

You can just look at the situation and be like, man, this organism would really benefit if it was that way, but you’d be told it’s better for everyone else if it’s that way, and I should support them in doing that, and if I can’t tolerate it, I’ll just leave.

Okay, well, that’s courageous.

That’s a very courageous thing to do, to not sublimate our needs to the needs of a group, and to not try and force a group to meet our needs.

That takes a lot of courage.

Okay, so this is what Buddha is, right?

Now we get into Dhyana Parmita, the perfection of meditation, which is what our whole school was founded on, completely abandoning attachment to both the void and calmness, yet not lingering in any void.

The mind is without abode, nor does it dwell in the great void itself.

This is Dhyana Parmita, and like, it’s like, he did these great expositions on all the other Parmitas, and for Dhyana Parmita, that’s all you had to say, like, come on, people, slackers.

So really, all they’re talking about here is your regular form of consciousness that’s existing right now, and if you’ve ever had a moment of pure, unified, bliss consciousness in your meditation, right?

They’re the same thing.

And so, yeah, for those of you who are listening to the audio, I’m getting the reactions on the thing that are perfect.

So right now, a bunch of balloons just popped up.

Earlier, it was a thumbs-up bubble.

So anyway, so the idea is that Dhyana, the perfection of meditative mind, is not to be able to freely enter into a state of nirvanic consciousness where thoughts cease, where you unzip and become one with the cosmos, okay?

If you’re a master of meditation, you can do that whenever you want, including simultaneous to, just like the saying, The Awakened One’s Vow, if each moment’s a rising flash of our normal feelings and thoughts, we will simultaneously recognize within us a field of pure awareness, what is a professional skillful means.

That simultaneously recognize a field of pure awareness is nirvanic consciousness underneath or simultaneous to everything else that’s happening in the world, everything else that’s happening in our objects, emotions, and thoughts, okay?

That’s what the perfection of Dhyana is, and that’s why our Zen meditation at its highest level is just sit down, shut up, be there, okay?

But earlier we said that we had to train ourselves to go into bliss consciousness, into nirvana at will, so that we have that as a tool to see through all the other things.

So you don’t get to just sit here before you’ve trained yourself to enter into nirvana conscious at will, okay?

They’re different times, they’re different modes of practice.

So the deep shamatha, it’s called shamatha, of cutting off all thoughts, cutting off all mind-wandering, being perfectly present, unzipping, going into cosmic consciousness.

This is a prerequisite for Dhyana, okay?

And then in Dhyana, you feel that substratum of nirvana consciousness as your mind does its normal thing, and now you’re sitting zen.

That’s what that’s what it’s all about, okay?

Which is not very easy, but extremely easy to describe.

So people who can’t do either, be wary of, okay?

And here we go.

Free of all projections and being void in nature, the mind does not even cling to the void itself, okay?

So being free of all projections is, so projection consciousness is when we impute our interpretation of reality onto reality, okay?

It’s the function of mind to make sense of the sensory experience.

Recognizing that all of those projections are illusions, fundamentally illusions, right?

Which is not hard, right?

Like you see a bell here, but we all know that because we have some education that this is made up of molecules and atoms.

We don’t perceive molecules and atoms.

We even less so perceive the underlying vibratory experience of the quarks and whatever sub-particles make up molecules and atoms and neurons and whatever, whatever, right?

I’m not a scientist, okay?

But we know that our sense world is not accurate because all that really exists is vibration and the force of energy going like this, and then having sex with each other.

Okay, so when you realize that, then you don’t need to attach to anything, nor do you need, including the experience of pure blissful consciousness, where you actually touch into that pure vibratory field, right?

Because it’s all the same.

There’s different forms of energy, and therefore the mind does not seek calmness.

This is one of the big things.

When you actually see through it, you no longer need your mind to be in a certain state, just like we talked about in the other Paramitas, because you radically accept that whatever mind state is happening is the manifestation of the cosmos as it is, and it’s there for a reason, doing its job according to the codependent arising of phenomena.

So you don’t need to seek calm realization.

You don’t need to seek happiness or bliss or whatever.

You don’t need to, because it’s all just like, this is what’s happening.

Its nature is perpetual equanimity.

So when nothing needs to be different than what it is, because everything is exactly as it should be, even if we don’t like how it is, part of exactly how it should be is the fact that we don’t like it, because it’s not cool, according to our time and space moral perspective.

Okay, well, fine.

Well, then we’re still in equanimity.

You can be in totally pissed off.

You can be a total neurotic mess and still be equanimous.

Why?

Because you feel like, yeah, I’m pissed off.

There’s no disturbance in being angry.

There’s disturbance in thinking that your anger is misplaced or a problem.

So the reality of all dharmas has this absolute nature.

It does not rely on any of the regular stages of spiritual progression or any particular transcendent state.

In this text, they call it wisdom, and this is the perfection of wisdom.

So I’ve ended up needing more time than I had originally thought it would, but that’s okay, because I’ve had a lot of fun, and hopefully you did too.

And I’ve got about 10 minutes left for discussion, which can take up some part of this or be completely tangential.

Thanks for listening.

So first of all, awesome job.

Thank you, Umi.

Delightful to listen to.

And I love the timing.

I always love the timing.

Because, yes, I was exactly dealing with that this morning.

And it’s nice, then, to see that some of that whole practice here does something with my consciousness and with my structures of thinking and my beliefs and my reactions and answers to the world.

So I noticed moments this morning when I was fighting against modes of my existence.

And I asked myself, like, really?

Is that really what I do?

How about just accepting that this is now?

Come on.

And that was uncomfortable in one way, but on the other way, really liberating and just makes life so much easier and so much more truthful and so much more in alignment.

And so, like, ah, this is how I show up.

Ah, look at this.

So there’s less hiding, less lying, less of everything that I want to get rid of, which I thought I need to get rid of with pressing myself into a certain structure.

So, ooh, yeah, this is intense, crazy, brave, blissful, horrible, terrifying, everything at all.

Everything it was.

So, and one thing came to my mind because of that, what we think about sometimes, especially when fresh people come into practice, that this stilling the mind, bring it to one point at a certain time.

For me, it looks more like the one point is an infinite big point.

So maybe you like to talk about that or just we listen to others who have other thoughts.

Thank you.

Let’s put a pin in that for a future Dharma talk because that’s more than we have time for now.

That’s a good point.

I’m delightful.

I think I saw Robin was unmuted and before I talk more, I want to make sure we hear from everybody.

I’m wondering if there’s, when you have total acceptance of what is, then what’s stopped one from becoming neglectful of life?

Hmm.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I really want to answer that because it’s a really important question, but let’s just check in with Marie first.

I’ll go and answer that question because I didn’t hear the vast majority of what you were saying, the Dharma talk, because company came in and I had to get things settled.

And then Zhenshen’s response was really piqued my interest.

So I’ll look forward to recording and listening to you respond, Robin.

This kind of has to do with the whole big dot, little dot thing, actually.

So in a way, these are kind of tied together.

We are both.

We are both a zero point.

Just can you repeat the question again?

I think I missed something because of audio.

So the question was when we accept everything, what stops us from becoming neglectful of life?

So if we radically accept life as it is, then where does the motivation come from to show up in life a certain way?

So this is part of that whole dot circle thing in the sense that we come into practice as a dot, as a very self-referential figure, and we have to explode into the big all-encompassing nirvanic consciousness that includes everything.

And what a lot of people do is they, in Zen practice in particular, demands people deconstruct their ego identity in order to achieve that oneness, which makes perfect sense, because how else can you explode into the infinite if you’re still a dot?

You can’t, right?

So zero has to become infinite.

The trick is the infinite has to become zero again.

And so it’s a partial realization to accept everything completely and to abdicate the fact that we’re still a zero point in time and space.

And that’s the black hole of Zen disease, is to get so big and to be so accepting and to be so blown out by the fact that time is infinite and we’re all immortal and things will take place over millions of generations and there’s an infinite cosmic web of karmic interactions and I’m just this puny insignificant time-bound human, right?

Everything’s perfect exactly as it is.

All that stuff is true, but it’s only halfway around the circle of Zen practice.

The other half is, so after we return to the divine, we have to recognize that the divine manifests itself through us.

We are the divine’s fingers and toes.

All of the cosmos is the divine’s brain, right?

So we are individual neurons in the consciousness of the cosmos.

And if we shut ourselves off because we’re all blissed out because we just made love to God, well, then we’re like, we stopped showing up, you know, and to continue the sexual metaphors because I’m on it today, it’s like in the afterglow.

If there’s no snuggling, no eye gazing, you don’t necessarily have to talk, but if there’s no connection in the afterglow and somebody just rolls over and falls asleep, it’s like, fuck you, man.

Like we just shared our soul together and you’re just going to roll over and fall asleep, you arrogant prick, right?

No, we’re still here.

We’re still two.

Two became one, one becomes two in a never-ending cycle of creation, right?

And so to forget that we are also one who has to show up to meet the other half, to recreate the one, is to just completely lose ourselves and abdicate reality as it is.

Because what is that we are also a time-bound, space-bound organism that has a relative function in a relative cosmos.

No amount of unity consciousness makes that not true.

I just thought if you would hit me with a hammer, I would feel it.

There’s no way I’m not feeling that.

As much as I meditate, I will feel that.

If you don’t while you’re meditating, you’ll feel it when you come back, right?

My thought related to my children, my grandchildren, that you can’t look at that and just think that the universe will take care of this.

You got a job to do.

Yeah, exactly.

So there’s zero point and there’s infinite.

In terms of meditation technique and meditation philosophy, whether or not we hold ourselves accountable to the zero point process or whether or not we just try and go straight into expansion, we can talk about that in our next Dharma talk.

That’s more of a technical procedural spiritual practice type of question and less of a philosophical question.

Today, the focus was more on philosophical restructuring than it was about practice methodology.

The next Dharma talk will stay with practice methodology more.

Let’s go ahead and do our closing check-in.

Umi checking in from Columbiana, Ohio, feeling impassioned and delightful to be alive.

Let’s go with Marie Robin and Benji.

Marie checking in from Columbus, Ohio.

Good to be with you all this morning.

Robin checking in from Sunnybrook Farm in Wisconsin.

This past week, I’ve made friends with COVID and I’m very much looking forward to reading the transcript because that was so much.

Right now, I’m feeling all the things very intensely, so I got to unpack that a little more.

Thank you.

That was intense.

Jen from Germany, Cologne checking in.

I love it when I trust this unfolding of life.

I’m mostly here to witness and less to forcefully do something about it.

Do what needs to be done, but without the idea of I need to do something about it.

Great delight to be with you all.

See you soon.

I’m in.

Yeah.

For those of you who are around at 1 p.m. Eastern, since you’re all in the Ureturn community,

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