It seems like each of you has become quite settled. It seems that You must have taken good care of yourself to be able to settle down in the middle of all your difficulties. And as you settled, some of you in that settling, were able to open to even further difficulties that were previously either unconscious or in some other way being avoided due to not being settled.

[01:11]

But still, at least one person said to me something that made me feel perhaps I didn't make the context of the practice of the middle way explicit at the beginning of the Tashin. And the context of the middle way is great love and compassion. the root of the practice of the Middle Way and the fruit of the practice of the Middle Way is great compassion, great love, great equanimity, great joy. Before we enter and realize the Middle Way,

[02:41]

we need great love. In order to walk the path of the Middle Way, we need great love. But before realizing and walking the way, or walking the way and realizing the way, our love, although great, can be still somewhat off balance. And learning the middle way balances and purifies our love of all duality. And thus, as I did say at the beginning, thus through practicing the middle way and purifying our love of all dualities, the world is healed. healed at one point in the universe.

[03:47]

The heart of the practitioner which has no bounds. But I just wanted to say again in case it wasn't clear that we need to be working on great love and great compassion in order to walk this path, this middle path. Because this middle path is a path where we practice great renunciation. And it's difficult to practice renunciation in the proper way if we don't have a feeling of love. Renunciation is not to trash ourselves and to angrily fight against our habits. It is to sit in the middle of the suffering of the world, to sit patiently still in the middle of the center of all suffering.

[05:04]

And in that space, in that place, feel the willingness and the wish to let body and mind drop off. Because in that position, in the middle of all suffering beings, we can see how clinging and craving are the source of suffering. And more and more be convinced that it would be good if that clinging and attachment and craving could just drop away and thus body and mind drop away. But we have to have a lot of love to sit still in the middle of all that suffering. We need a lot of positive energy to sit in a place like that without getting depressed Compassion is not depression, although depression is called the near enemy of compassion.

[06:18]

Right near compassion is the pit of depression. So when we fall into depression, it's not compassion. Compassion is to joyfully sit right at the cliff of depression and not fall in. Stay upright. Although sometimes we do fall in, but then we have to somehow joyfully, lovingly, arouse ourselves, give ourselves love, give others love, and feel lifted back onto the path of compassion. The far enemy, the remote enemy of compassion is cruelty, hatred. That's farther away. That also interferes with compassion. Hating is an enemy, but it's farther. The near one is depression. And to walk along the path of letting go of all of our attachments could be seen as depressing.

[07:29]

You mean I can't even hold on to that? Give me a break. That's too austere. You mean I can't even hold on to my teddy bear? My 4,000 pound teddy bear? It's not that you can't, it's that you want to let go of it because you can see how it's squashing you down and hurting your back. And you can still have your teddy bear, just you won't be clinging to it anymore. You and your teddy bear can walk together on the middle way now. You'll be saved from your teddy bear and your teddy bear's saved from you.

[08:36]

But you have to really feel a lot of love to know you're not abandoning your teddy bear. For whose sake are we hugging this thing? Is it for him or for you? But if you really do love your teddy bear and yourself, you can just let it sit on the bed and you can sit next to it upright. in a state of loving renunciation, giving up the world because you love the world and want to understand your true relationship with it. So the middle way, can we do go through this loneliness, renouncing attachment and seeking and renouncing all distraction from our life, renouncing all abstraction and pulling ourself away from our life, renouncing all the ways of turning away from life and sinking down into the experience

[10:00]

the direct experience of our life. As we let go of our distractions and abstractions, for a moment at least, and sometimes for more than a moment, we feel at a loss for our old buffer zones, our old habits, our old pals that kept us away from our life. They were useful at a certain point, you know, Maybe when we were little kids, we just couldn't stand directly experiencing those giant people who mattered so much to us. So we moved into a little fairyland where we'd be safe with our teddy bear. But now, if they were ever useful, those ways we distracted ourselves from the awesome intensity of love, it's time to maybe consider putting them aside.

[11:06]

But to take an old tool that you've used for many years and set it aside, you feel a little sad. Bye-bye distraction. Bye-bye abstraction. Bye-bye commenting on my life. It's nice, I like, it's my sweet commentary that I wrote about my life that I'd been writing. Set it aside and live it. Yikes. Yikes plus, oh, poor old commentary. Who's going to take care of you? What you can do is you can, if you want to, you could just bring your commentary and give it to me. I'll hold it for you in case you need it later. You can just, you know, check it in. to the Dzogchen room, and you'll know where to find it if you need it later. And then you can just live your life nakedly without your old tools of abstraction, distraction, clinging and seeking, and enter into the middle way, into the right view.

[12:22]

But this practice of renunciation and the practice of right view are rooted in great love. Because this work is... If you... You could feel cold. You could feel cold. You could feel hot. You could feel alone. You could feel anything when you let go of your distance from your life. When you get rid of your lawyer. LAUGHTER and just see what happens. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.

[13:37]

We need great love to die, to die of our attachments. So, anyway, in order to practice Bodhidharma's way of mind like a wall, where outside, all those things, you don't activate your mind, you give up all this activation around objects, You have to have great love for yourself, for others, and feel others supporting you. You need to feel that we're all supporting you and all the Buddhas are supporting you to do this scary work of not getting excited, not activating your mind around objects, and inwardly also not activating your mind around objects. Nagarjuna says, pertaining to the view, mine and I, which also means not mine and not I, whether associated with internal or external,

[15:05]

Okay, so usually something happens externally or internally, we say, I or mine. Or not mine, not I. In other words, we don't just look at the thing like, I look at this thing called Salvi and I say, not mine or mine, my Salvi, my teddy bear. So I see something out there and I don't activate my mind and say, my Matthew, my Matthew. And inside I don't say, my feelings. This is me. This is I. I don't do that. I just watch the feeling. I just watch the object. When views pertaining, when these views, you know, so something happens and these views arise, and when you don't grasp those views, existence, non-existence, mine, not mine, I, not I, all these views flying off,

[16:31]

your mind, your brain, your mind, producing this stuff all the time, I-mind, I-mind, all around, you don't grasp them. You just watch stuff come up. When views pertaining to I and mind, whether they are associated with internal or external, have waned, then grasping comes to cease. When things arise, when faces come and go, without these views of mine and I. And mine and I mean you can't help but grasp. If it's mine, it's mine. If it's I, it's I. I can't stop. When they have waned, grasping comes to cease. When the waning of grasping, or with the waning of grasping, there is the waning of birth. With the waning of birth, there is the waning of death.

[17:37]

There is the waning of birth and death. There is the waning of the world of birth and death. Just by the waning of grasping. Just by the waning of these ideas of mine and I. But even though those ideas may still occur, if they're not grasped, There's just the arising and ceasing of phenomena. And it seems like you're you're pretty much settled now, that you're getting close to just be with what's happening, what's arising and ceasing, that somehow you have renounced

[18:40]

and you have been kind to yourself so you could renounce your attachments, you have felt supported by each other and the Buddhas enough to have settled without recourse to your experience, settled into your experience without recourse to your experience, at least for the moment, at least until tomorrow. And then maybe you'll take recourse to your experience again. We'll see. When Robert Frost wrote the first line of his poem, I have been one acquainted with the night, I don't know if at that time he had renounced views of existence and non-existence.

[20:25]

But I think by the end of the poem, he had. Maybe at the beginning of the poem, he was contemplating such a renunciation and entry into right view. But I feel by the end, he had realized right view. by walking down those lonely nighttime streets, by facing the night, the not. The bodhisattvas love beings which they understand are not.

[21:36]

They love beings and walk with them and become acquainted with not. Nagarjuna also said something like, the Buddhas have made known the conception of self and have taught the doctrine of no-self.

[22:56]

At the same time, they have not spoken of something as the self. At the same time, they have not spoken of something as the self, or something which is the self, or something which is the non-self. Buddhas have made known the conception of self, and they've also taught the doctrine of not-self. But at the same time, they have not spoken of something which is self or not-self. There really isn't a self and there really isn't a not-self. Self is an antidote to those people who think nothing matters.

[24:04]

that it's all an illusion, and this world isn't worth loving and caring for every single living being. So the Buddha teaches that there's a self. You have to take care of it and love it. But for those who make the self into something that exists and lasts, they teach not-self. But once you're free from nonexistence, And once you're free from existence, once you're free from grasping existence and non-existence, then you should know that those teachings of self and not-self, to help you become free of grasping those views, that there's no such thing as self and not-self. The Buddhas have provisionally employed the term atman, self, and instructed on the true idea of anatman, not self.

[25:27]

They've also taught that any abstract entity as self or not self does not exist. These are just medicine, these teachings, for our tendency to grasp self, existence, permanence, or not-self, non-existence, annihilation. These are teachings to help us in the process of developing right view. So if you're settling now, and if you've settled as you walk this path, as you walk down these nighttime roads

[26:39]

You need to be kind of like intravenously feeding yourself love all the way. You need to continue to give yourself the most loving intention, the most loving wishes every step of the way. You need to keep giving yourself love. You need to love this self. until the love overflows to the other. And you need to love the other until the love overflows and you can feel love coming from the entire universe. With all this support, you can dare to let go of self and other. And when you dare to let go of self and other, you can see the relationship of self and other.

[27:53]

You can see that self is born of other and that other is born of self. You can see the true interdependent circle of life where the self, the subject, is a project of the earth, and the earth is a projection of the self. And round and round this interdependent circle goes, And again, to enter into the state of renunciation, we need to feel great love.

[29:15]

And then after renunciation is realized, we need to feel great love. And before renunciation is realized, we need to feel great love in order to tolerate the pain of not yet being willing to renounce. So while you're still holding on, it's painful and scary. When you wish to let go, it's painful and scary. And after you let go, it's lonely for a while until you understand that the self is not alone. The self is the child of the world, and the world is the projection of the self. Self and world are not separate, never can be separated except by dreaming that it's so.

[30:26]

So Dogen Zenji wrote an essay one time in Japanese. He wrote it, classical Japanese. It's a short one. I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, though. And he named the fascicle after me. It's called Zenki. Or maybe I was named after it. And now that I was named after it, I name it after me. Now that I was born of this essay, this essay is now brought forth by me. What a coincidence. So Zenki means the whole works. That's the second part of my name.

[31:43]

I like that translation of Zenki. Want to hear some other translations of Zenki now that you're in the neighborhood? Another translation is total dynamic function. Like that? Huh? Another one is concerted activity. A new one is cosmic activity. But I like the whole works because, as Tom Cleary, who translated it that way, points out, you can hear it as colloquial or as standard English. In colloquial, the whole works means everything, right? It means the whole shebang, right? But standard English is a sentence. The whole works. The universe works.

[33:00]

And it means both. It means the whole universe, and it also means that the whole universe works. Where does the universe work? Where does it work? Does it work all over? Yes. And where else does it work? Do you know where else it works besides all over? Yeah. It works like right here and also right here. It works in all the right here's, doesn't it? Doesn't it kind of work at all these, it doesn't skip over some of the places and move on to some other ones? The universe works at each place. And the first part of my name is Ten Shin, which means many things, but one of the things it means is ultimate truth. But another meaning of it is to be kind of naive, like a child, like you say to a child, you raise your hand, you say, what's this? And the child says, it's your hand, it's a hand.

[34:03]

And when Suzuki Roshi gave me the name, he said, Ten Shin means Reb is Reb. So when a thought is a thought, when an arising of a thought is the arising of a thought, that's ten shin. When the ceasing of a thought is a ceasing of a thought, that's ten shin. When there is the perception of a thought, with the right wisdom, and it's just the perception of a thought, that's tianshin. When there's a perception of a ceasing of a thought with the right wisdom, and there's just the perception of the ceasing of the thought as it comes to cease, that's tianshin. There's no

[35:08]

There's no views of self and other or mind. They're just arising and ceasing. They're just Diana is Diana. That's it. When things are like that, that's the whole works. When things are like that, that's the total function of the universe at that point, at that event. And this projecting notions of mind, my universe, my breath, my house, my pain, that kind of thoughts, when they're not there, internally or externally, that tension disappears. And that's the whole universe working at that point.

[36:13]

So, Dogen's fascicle about this. It's hard not to read the whole thing, but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to skip over the part about the great path of Buddha in its consummation. is the passage to freedom is actualization. I'm not going to read that part. By the way, that's a traditional Zen thing to do, is to say what you're not going to say. Like, I'm not going to say anything about the passage to freedom. I'm not going to say anything about that. But I am going to say something about life is like riding in a boat. You raise the sails and you row with the oars. Although you row, the boat gives you a ride.

[37:18]

And without the boat, no ride could happen. But you ride in the boat. and the boat and your riding. But you ride in the boat, and the boat and your riding makes the boat what the boat is." And then he says, investigate such a moment as this. I think maybe exclamation mark. One should meditate on this precise point, this point where you make the boat and the boat makes you. And you and the boat make the ocean and the shore and the sky. There's no boat without you riding in it, and you can't ride in the boat without the boat. And there's no riding in the boat without the ocean and the shore and the sky and the entire world.

[38:24]

And there's no entire world without you riding in a boat. This is the great circle of you and the world. This is the great function which you are all the time. How can we see this and remember this? The middle way. The middle way is the way which leads us to this vision of our life together, which is peaceful, calm, enlightenment, and nirvana. So, see, I didn't read the whole thing. Like I said, I wouldn't. That's not the traditional Zen way.

[39:30]

So please enjoy your walk on the Middle Way. Please enjoy becoming one who has been acquainted with the not. Give your love to yourself completely every moment. You must do this. The world needs you to do this so you can do this wonderful work of walking the middle way, and so you can learn to give your love to others free of the duality of self and other. We're all just a thin, thin little sugar-coated layer away. from dropping all this attachment, renouncing, grasping.

[40:55]

But it may take a really long time and lots and lots of sincere practice before it drops away. before you can look at somebody's face and just see a face without looking for something deeper than this wonderful, ordinary face. Can I just peel that back and see a little bit more there? Who is that behind there? No, I give up. I'll just deal with you. I'm not going to reach for the deep mystery behind all this. I'm just going to be somebody who kind of like, oh, that's a face, I guess.

[42:08]

Well, that's a face, I guess. Does that sound like goofy? Occasionally we slip into entertainment. But now you're back in the plain old middle way, walking in the night. Have a wonderful walk. May our intention

[42:52]

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