I am impressed again and again, and again and again, how helpful it is if I am able to be aware of the dualities, the conflicts and contradictions that my mind creates, and also if I can be aware of the pain and discomfort that arises around these conflicts.

[01:00]

The tension that arises between the poles of contradictions, if I can somehow be aware of this and be at peace with this, it seems to be very helpful. And I say myself, but when I talk to people about their lives, I find that not just me, but other people too, have a hard time being aware of this kind of tension and this kind

[02:14]

of contradiction and this kind of pain. That there is a strong tendency in us to turn away from this pain. One way to turn away from it is directly denying it, another way to turn away from it is to simplify the situation so that the contradiction disappears. A couple of examples of that are, well a couple, maybe many examples of that are, for example, the other night when the sangha gave me this robe, Galen read some things from Dogen's

[03:22]

fascicle on the merit of the okesa, and before the ceremony I asked her to read to me some selection that she was going to read, and in her selection she avoided some of the statements that sound particularly exclusive, and still there were a few in there that I thought were so exclusive that I thought it would cause, perhaps, immediately people to get upset, so we eliminated some of them, but still as I listened I felt like what those words sounded like still could lead one to feel some exclusiveness or some sectarianism or something like that

[04:25]

in what was read. And after that ceremony some people came to see me and talk to me, people who wear okesas, and I think, if I might say, that both of them said to me something like, when they heard those words of Dogen, they said something like, I don't believe that, or something like that, I don't believe what he's saying, or I don't like what he's saying, or something like that. In other words, if he's saying that there's only one way and anybody who doesn't practice that way is excluded from enlightenment, I don't believe that, that's not my faith, I

[05:31]

don't like that kind of talk. And I'll just say that's one situation where I sense there's some contradiction or some tension there between the feeling like there's only one way and if you don't do it that way forget it, and the other way, I don't know what the other extreme would be, the other can realize the Buddha way. Those may sound like two poles, or maybe everyone in and of whatever way they practice can realize the Buddha way. Now, another tension or another contradiction or paradox is the paradox of our relationships,

[06:32]

relationships, namely that when we are talking to somebody or communicating with somebody there's a contradiction or apparent contradiction or tension between you expressing yourself and you needing recognition of what you're saying and at the same time recognizing the other person and what they're saying. And so what we often do in a situation like that is the tension is so great that what we do is split off into roles of, okay, I'll recognize you and I'll let you express yourself or you recognize me and I'll get to express myself.

[07:37]

But that splitting off, although it seems to reduce the tension, it doesn't work very well in the long run because if you're the one who is giving up her position to recognize him, after a while he won't feel recognized by you because you have no position and you're nobody, or vice versa, and then of course it works the other way. If you express yourself to someone who you don't recognize, after a while their recognition of you will be meaningless because they're nobody there. Not to mention that if you give up your position and recognize another person, you might also at some other level find out that you've denied yourself.

[08:45]

And that might not work for you either, to say the least. That's another example. Going back to the earlier example of, another way to put it is there's only one way and I'm getting a little lost here, I'm sort of losing something, I don't know what I'm losing, but anyway, there's only one way and when we hear that we don't feel comfortable we might feel, I don't know, something's getting blocked here.

[09:56]

And I kind of would like to get out of this blocked situation. In the first example, I don't believe that, is being opposed by, I don't want to, I don't want to not believe that either, it seems so true, I don't believe that or I think that something's wrong there, it's being opposed by, but there's got to be something okay and it would be easier to flop over and say I don't believe that no matter what, or I believe that totally, at least that's what you said. Right. Does that help? Give me a break. Well that just shipped to a totally different realm and maybe this will all clear up later. So, my body has had some pain recently and so one of the things that comes up in my mind

[11:28]

is what is my body trying to tell me? It's telling me that it's in pain, but what else is it trying to tell me? Or, I don't know, what is the fact that my body's in pain telling me? And I don't know exactly what it is, but I feel really good about listening to the pain and keeping an eye on the pain, and I feel there's a slight difference between saying that I'm coming from the pain of my body and to say that I'm coming from or that I'm trying to come from awareness of the pain of my body. I'm feeling pretty good about coming from awareness of the pain in my body. I'm coming from awareness and taking care of myself in that awareness.

[12:30]

And someone said to me, yeah, the body is really great, the body is like a bridge between, this person said, the absolute world and she said, what's the other one? I said, relative. She said, yeah, that's it. And what popped in my head was that our body is kind of like a bridge between what Dogen calls the circle of water and the ocean. His expression, when you go out in the ocean far away from the shore where there's no islands and you look around, the ocean looks like a circle of water. It doesn't look any other way. Because of the way we perceive things, the ocean looks like a circle of water. But of course, the ocean isn't a circle. It's much more complex and much bigger than that circle of water that we see. But that's all we can see is a circle of water.

[13:34]

So now, too, I walk around in Tassajar or wherever I am and I see a circle of water. Wherever I go, I see a world. But this world is just a little circle of water in the big world. But my body is kind of like saying, hello, hello. Do you believe that this circle of water is what's going on? It's like it's a messenger or a bridge from a bigger world that's saying, are you overlooking something or are you on some trip in the circle of water? And I don't know what to say, but the pain of the body particularly asks that question. Are you believing that this circle of water is all that there is? I mean, have you remembered that there's more than this? And in my mind, I might be able to just go along day after day, year after year and think,

[14:44]

yeah, this circle of water is really what's happening. But the pain kind of gives me the chance to think, in a real way, this body and this bodily pain in this real way are kind of like offering a chance to connect, to bridge over. The little circle here and the big ocean. And somehow when I become aware of this body and its pain, which is not in my program, there's a certain amount of pain that's in my program, but there's some kinds that are not, and when I become aware of them, something changes for me. And also, when my version of practice is not hurting,

[15:54]

then my version of practice is also a circle of water. But when my version of practice is hurting or I have pain around what I think practice is, in other words, yeah, when I feel some tension or pain around what practice is, maybe I think, well, maybe there's a bigger world of practice too, or a bigger understanding of practice. Sometimes when I'm talking to people in the last few weeks, I feel, have felt some pain in my back and particularly some stiffness above my hips. And if I put my hands by my side and lift myself up a little bit, that creates a little bit less pressure on the joints. And after a little while,

[16:55]

I feel more comfortable. So partly I'm doing that to relieve the pain or the stiffness. But while I'm doing that, I also try to continue to be aware. I'm actually watching. I'm actually tuning into that tension and that pain. And while I'm taking care of myself under those circumstances, I'm still able to hear the other person talk, I've found. And then when the pain subsides or the stiffness subsides, I can continue to hear the person for a while. But I find actually, I have found that when I'm actually addressing that pain and taking care of it, I feel like I'm hearing quite well. On the other hand, if I sit and listen to the person, but try not and

[18:00]

don't address the pain and get into it, or even try to sit through it, like just sit through it, I have a trouble hearing the other person. So I've found that if there is pain or stiffness, if the more I get into taking care of it, the better I can hear, I feel the other person. And if I would just try to get through it, then I'm on this trip of getting through it, but I don't have much, it's hard, I'm not really listening to the other person. At the same time, if I'm sitting without any pain, any awareness of pain, I don't feel like I'm sitting through it or forcing my way through it. It's hard, I don't know what to say about that. Because actually, on some level, I would guess that on some level there's some tension going

[19:00]

on between us. That even though I'm not having back pain, probably in some other dimension, there's some pain between us. Like right now, maybe there's some pain between us. So

[20:04]

jumping from here up to Green Gulch, when I was at Green Gulch on this recent trip, during the time I was away, I attended some meetings at Green Gulch. And in a very gross, I'm going to grossly say what the meetings were about, just to sort of give you a pungent sense of them. But what they were about was, to some extent, some people were saying something about Soto Zen, you know. But some people were saying, I'm here to practice Soto Zen, they said. And they even implied or almost said, and I think there's some other people at Green Gulch that aren't here to practice Soto Zen. And I didn't hear anybody say, I think the people who aren't practicing Soto Zen should be asked to leave. I didn't hear anybody say that.

[21:10]

But some of the people thought that somebody was saying that about them. And they felt really excluded by the way the person was describing their practice, and felt really hurt. And I felt, and I said at that meeting, that I feel like there is in our hearts a tendency, I don't know, maybe I should say hearts, but there is within our hearts and minds some tendency at Zen Center to become sectarian, to develop some idea of this is the way to practice. And the other ways are somewhat misguided or

[22:17]

misguided. Maybe those people should practice somewhere else. I don't want to exclude them, but maybe they should leave. There is some feeling like that that comes up now and then. And I was talking to Donald about this just a little while ago, and he said that he felt among the communities that he's visited, the spiritual community he's visited, he felt that there was less sectarianism and self-righteousness at Tassajara than he had seen at other places. And I said, I feel like that may be true, and I think part of the reason why that may be true is I think at Zen Center there is some awareness at least in our community that we are somewhat self-righteous, that we are somewhat sectarian, and that that is a kind of an illness, a spiritual illness, and we've got it to some extent here. And it's also a little bit funny that we've got it,

[23:25]

and we think it sometimes is a little funny and sometimes it's not so funny, and it's also that's pretty funny too that it's not so funny. People who are not committed to good are not so susceptible to self-righteousness, but there is a fairly strong commitment here in this community to practicing good. For example, now we have the situation of some people who are becoming more and more aware of what's involved in bringing us dairy products and eggs, mayonnaise, and so on. People are becoming more aware of the industrial farming process that brings these things and the suffering that's involved there, and as a result they are starting to practice abstaining from these products. The reason for that seems to be that they feel they don't want to support or cooperate

[24:31]

with an industry that is cruel to living beings, but there's a danger there that they'll start thinking they're better than these other people at Tassajar who are still eating dairy products and eggs. Some other people might decide that they want to stop smoking because they feel smoking is not good for them, also that they don't want to support the cigarette business, the cigarette industry, which has its powerful lobby in government and does various other things to the land to raise the tobacco and so on and so forth. So they might say, I'm going to stop smoking, that's a good thing, but then they might start feeling bad about the smokers. This might happen right here in Tassajar. And what else is there? Sugar. The sugar industry, what it takes to make sugar is that people have, the human beings anyway,

[25:32]

that cut the sugar cane down, live horrible lives. They haven't been able to mechanize the cropping of sugar cane because sugar cane grows in marshes and trucks various kinds of, they haven't found a vehicle that can go into the marshes, so people are still doing it by hand and that work is body destroying. It's a horrible life and these guys do it because they get paid a lot of money for it, but it ruins their bodies. That's just part of what it takes to grow sugar. What it used to take was, as you know, in order to produce that white stuff, you had to have lots of black slaves. So some people also for the health factor have started to reduce or cut down sugar. On and on, various good things to do in this world, but what about the people who aren't doing it? Zazen is good too. What about the people who aren't practicing zazen? Well, there's a contradiction there, right? A tension between smoking and not smoking,

[26:38]

eating dairy products and not eating dairy products, eating poultry products and not eating poultry products, smoking and not smoking, drinking and not drinking. We also have a drinking problem too here at Tushar. Do we let the guests drink or not? That's another one we've got here. Sugar or not sugar? Pesticides or not pesticides? On and on, we are concerned, right? So one way to do it is just forget about it. That makes it simpler. The other way is know you're right. That makes it simpler. In other words, let's do something, make adjustments so we don't have this contradiction here, we don't have this tension, because this tension is painful, isn't it? Sometimes. So we want to just say, I don't believe in that, or I do believe in it, absolutely correct, and the other people are out of it. Some way to make the tension go away. But what I'm proposing

[27:42]

is that these tensions exist as long as we look at the world from this circle of water. And if we can accept the pain of these tensions, we may be able to not veer off into, I'm right and you're wrong, or you're right and I'm wrong, or we're right and they're wrong, or they're right and we're wrong, those ways don't work out anyway. That's kind of the key point for me right now, is can we somehow find a way to stand or sit or lie down, anyway, peacefully accept and to be able to tolerate the tensions

[28:51]

rather than split them off in one side or the other. My theory is, my belief at this point is, my faith is, that by sitting in the middle of these contradictions without simplifying them into one side or the other, that we have a chance of realizing the truth. I mentioned this quote some time ago to you, which is at the beginning of a book about Martin Luther King, where the person who wrote the book said, I have the faith that the truth appears or the truth will be realized in the, I think he said, maximum effort to see through the eyes of enemies, foreigners, and strangers. The truth will appear in the maximum effort to see through the eyes of enemies, foreigners,

[30:06]

and strangers. So, for example, if I'm a Soto Zen person and I think the okase is really wonderful and I've seen the examples of people who wear it and been inspired, those are my eyes. But what about the eyes of those who don't wear the okase or the eyes of those who even do wear the okase but have questions about it and so on? People who are against that practice or who are strangers to it and so on. How can I try to see through their eyes? I never can see through the person's eyes, but I can try. I can make a maximum effort to see through their eyes. And then it isn't my way or his way or her way

[31:07]

that realizes the truth. It is the mutual standing, the difference between the way we see and both sides trying to see the other side, trying to see, trying to recognize and sympathize with the other side without giving up our own eyes, not abandoning our own position, not submitting and forgetting about how we feel and what our experience is. As a matter of fact, being quite firm and fearless and steadfast in what our experience is and at the same time trying to see through the other person's eyes. This is a very tense situation, a lot of contradiction and I think it's painful, different and all kinds of different kinds of pain, pain that we hardly

[32:09]

even know is pain. It's very intense and we want to split off. I think we have a tendency to split off from that kind of intensity into some easier way of being that requires in the short run less awareness. However, sometimes, maybe in my case, the body comes to our aid and gives us some kind of message that maybe we have been avoiding something which is very great that we get help that way. Or sometimes people come and tell us that they think we're denying something. They care enough about us to say, I think you're denying something, or I don't think you're listening to me. So I guess, I'll throw this out too, that I guess if I stay in my little world, my little

[33:43]

circle of water and if I just stay there and hold on to that, I think I'll actually feel some pain. I don't think that will work for me and that my awareness of my pain in my circle of water may open me, even though I can never see outside my little circle of water, it may open me to the more complete world, even though I'll still always see with biased eyes. It's somehow, if I can accept the pain that comes with seeing with biased eyes, maybe I somehow set up some kind of communication with unbiased eyes. And I'm not saying that only by except only by pain will we get this communication,

[34:46]

but rather that if there is pain, we can't skip over it. Because if we skip over it, then our communication with the unbiased truth is just intellectual, is just theoretical. We are theoretically saved. So I just feel like we all have this tendency to skip over this simple fact, that as long as we're looking through biased eyes and we do have biased eyes a good share of the day, there's some pain associated with that. It's sometimes quite subtle. And I also would say that I personally vow to completely support anybody who wants to look at that. And I think that we have been trained in our childhood and adulthood too, that some people do

[36:00]

not want us to let them know that we're in pain. That they'd rather not hear about it. And part of the reason why some people have told us that is that if we tell them we're in pain, they might become aware that they're in pain. And they were told that they're not supposed to be aware of their pain too. Therefore, they tell us not to tell them, and so on. But here at Tassajara anyway, even though it might lead to the fact of all of us going into complete collapse and nobody being able to cook lunch anymore, I still would be willing to take the chance of all of us just turning around and opening our eyes to whatever suffering is there and then see

[37:04]

if we can go on. I think we'll survive, but it is scary. It is possible that we will be temporarily incapacitated if we open our eyes to how much we're suffering. It might happen. I'm willing to pay the price with myself and with any of you. If you can't go on, if you can't follow the schedule, if you can't cook lunch, if you can't serve lunch, if you can't do your work because you're so overwhelmed when you open your eyes to your suffering, okay. I don't think that'll happen, but okay. You can suffer here. It is okay, and now and then you can tell us if you're suffering, if you'd like to. And you can suffer about anything you want to. You can suffer about Soto Zen, you can suffer about

[38:10]

dairy products, you can suffer about the way people talk to you, you can suffer about the way people don't recognize you, anything. You can suffer about the way you're interrupted, the way you're treated like a child, the way you're disrespected. You can suffer about anything because people can suffer about anything, they do. So you can do that, you can see that, it's okay. And I'd much rather hear, and I think most people would much rather hear you say, I'm in pain, than hear you say, I hate you. And I kind of feel from my experiences that if people walk around this world denying their pain, pretty soon they start saying, I hate you. They start blaming other people for it, because they're denying it. But if we could admit our own pain, then we could practice patience with it, and we wouldn't start

[39:13]

blaming other people for it. And still we could say to people, when you say that, it hurts. When you talk to me that way, it hurts. Owie! It hurts. But that's it. I think people at Tassajara can hear that from each other. Sometimes if someone tells you that what they say to you, or what you said to them hurt them, if they say that to you, and there's some anger in it, of course that will hurt. But even if they aren't angry and they say it to you, it still might hurt, because they might open you up to your suffering, and you might feel like they imposed that on you. Well, that stuff happens, I'm sorry. I think it's a lot better though than the other way of just attacking people. Again, I just think it's unavoidable

[40:19]

that we have pain as long as we look through biased eyes, and we're going to have biased eyes for some time in the future. So it looks like there's going to be pain in this world, and I'm just saying, I had this idea, maybe we should make a new Buddhist flag, at least for practice period, and raise it up above the place, and write on it, denial. Not that we recommend denial, but that we own to it, that we own to the fact that we're going around denying our pain. At least wonder, what pain am I denying right now? The primary cause of enlightenment is patience, and you can't practice patience in mid-air. Patience is practice with hardship and pain,

[41:23]

and you don't have to create any hardship and pain, it's already there. Why don't we just encourage ourselves and others to just turn around and look at it, and also be aware that there's some parts of it that we cannot see now, and the way we see it is when we see other people who are doing something that we have some problem with, and there's the tension again, they're not behaving properly, and again that points us back towards the source of our problem. Anyway, I feel like I've gone on a little too long on this, I'm sorry. Is there anything you'd like to discuss about this?

[42:25]

Yes, could you speak up please? One shouldn't try to be an ethical person? I can't hear you. Could you say again please? I don't know. Did I say that? Yeah, that's what I thought. Anyway, could you talk about that? Did you mean, you can't always, if you think you're an ethical person, you can find that you've taken on a role and you've actually put yourself in some way? Well, I think it's good, I guess I think it's very good to try to be an ethical person. So, I think you should try to be an ethical person.

[43:34]

So I reversed my earlier statement, but what I also said was, which is just a quote, to think, this is ethics, I am ethical and I'm helping people. That kind of thinking is not what we call the perfection of ethics. To think, this is ethics, I am ethical, I think some ethical people think that way. Okay, I think they do, some very good people think that they're good, but this is still, although they're good, they're also self-righteous. It's better to be dedicated to good without going around saying, this is good. To be dedicated to good and leave what good is as an open question between you and others. In other words, enter into the tension that what is good is something that is partly what you think and partly what he or she thinks.

[44:37]

And you don't really know what they think, you have to work on that. That good is arrived at in a common effort together. And in that situation, that kind of effort is not based on already concluding what's good. And if you think you know what's good, then that's something you confess as a way you think. Does that make sense? Yes. And that does fit perfectly with what I'm saying,

[45:59]

but I welcome people to say other things which don't fit so perfectly. But that does fit perfectly, yes. There isn't always such a big affliction, but we'd have to be open to it. If you're closed to it, even if it's not there, you're in trouble, just by your closeness. It turns out by Buddhist theory, by the way, that the first entry into the path, what's called stream-winner, the first entry always happens with the truth of pain as the object. But that's the entry point. Later levels of awakening do not necessarily have pain as the thing you're concentrating on. Have you heard of stream-winner or stream-enterer? There's four stages of holiness in the Theravada path. Stream-enterer, once-returner, never-returner and arhat. The first entry into the formal Buddhist, what do you call it, nobility, elite club,

[47:06]

the first point of entry is with pain as an object. But later developments isn't necessarily pain. But that's the entry point, just to make sure you don't skip over it. Anything else about anything that you want to bring up? Any bystanders? Or by-sitters, yes? This is a confused statement about the pain that I've been feeling ever since I came here to swim. I stepped out on my floor and on the flip side I was seeing incredible purple irises and they were so vibrant and so beautiful and it was like looking at them gave me pain in my heart.

[48:09]

And so I thought at the time it was strange that something so beautiful would hit me in the heart like that. And immediately I then thought of being well, the thought that was in my head was interesting that the one-eared Dutchman painted on his irises something perhaps with heart. And then I thought of the starry sky swirling and some sense of just the pain of meeting the intensity of being alive sometimes. It sets up this tension that just gets you to step out of nowhere. You might just be inside brushing your teeth and you feel fine and all of a sudden it's like there he is. Right. And then I started walking, realizing that you know, now I've got this state of pain. And I came across this today to be

[49:12]

in a Tibetan text that I've never read before and this sentence popped out. I'm not to be assailed only by the arising of desire. So that thought came into my head again and I started walking. And so I guess the pain I'm getting sick of this morning is this, I don't know if that's true. I didn't hear it. It's like a luminosity. Assailed only by the arising of desire. And it's kind of an interrelation between this good life and the arising of desire. And I think this may be saying something pretty similar to what you've been saying in different

[50:34]

words, but I'm not sure. My experience of being in physical pain recently has been that it's opened me up. And sometimes when there's substantial pain, it feels like I can get in touch with, I guess I would say some more fundamental pain, some kind of pain that's not that my neck hurts or my arm aches. And I don't see it so much as going out to the universal,

[51:34]

but I see it as going down into the universal in myself. And I'm just wondering if that seems to you like a different description of the same thing that you were saying or something else. Sounds like the same thing to me. But go ahead, say something different. That's fine. It hurts. It hurts. I can say something different. Uh-oh. Well, as I was carrying the condiments up yesterday, I fell and instead of dropping the tray and protecting my knees, I landed up on my knees.

[52:41]

So I hope you enjoy the condiments. How about we could make a little pellet, a little package of, what do you call it? Is that stuff called? No. Chutney. Give it a little chutney heart. Actually, I wasn't going to have any chutney, but for some reason or other, I reached out and had some and it really was good. Thank you. But since the kitchen seems to be abandoning us, maybe we should stop.

[53:27]

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