The last class was over and Rick asked me a question. I was saying that the way I'm using the word compassion is that it arises in dependence on suffering, and there was some discussion about that compassion would be compassion even if there wasn't any suffering, and I said, for me, that doesn't make any sense. So partly that's the way I'm using the word compassion, is that it's a conventional designation for something that dependently co-arises with suffering, so that's my convention for using compassion. So for me, no passion, no pain, no suffering, no compassion, because compassion dependently co-arises with it. So compassion has conventional existence, but it has dependent existence, and it depends

[01:10]

on suffering, and it depends on beings that are suffering. So you take away beings and suffering, for me, you don't have compassion. If you bring in beings and suffering, then you do have compassion. It spontaneously arises, conditioned by those things. Compassion is immediately manifested as soon as you have suffering beings, but since it depends, since it wonderfully and spontaneously arises in relationship to them, it also is empty. Therefore compassion, nobody knows what compassion is, except conventionally, it has no inherent existence, but does have conventional existence. And then Rick's question was, well, would you say the same for love, in the sense that love depends on suffering, and I said, no, love can appear without suffering, it can have a happy mountainside, or a river, or even a Buddha, a happy Buddha, or a stag,

[02:23]

or a doe, who are not suffering, and love could co-dependently arise with them. Now, what love is, conventionally speaking, in my convention, love is, in some sense, the oneness of all being. It's the oneness of the doe, and the mountain, and the people, and the stag, and the river, and the galaxies. It's that dependence among all things that is always there. So love does not depend on humans, except when there's humans there. When there's humans there, love dependently co-arises with humans. But if you took away all the humans, or took away all the suffering humans, love could still dependently co-arise. And love is also empty of the essential, ultimate, but it's empty of essential, independent self-existence. It's not independent of ultimate existence.

[03:26]

It has ultimate existence. Its ultimate existence is that it's dependent. They co-arisen and therefore empty. But that's the same ultimate existence as compassion. It's just that the dependent co-arising of love and the dependent co-arising of compassion for me, the way I conventionally use those two words, is different. But they're both empty, because they both dependently co-arise. There was love, and there will be love. There was love before there were humans. There was love before humans had self. There was love before humans had conceived of self. There was love before humans attached to self. There was love before humans had suffering arising from self-attachment. And if we ever stop being involved in that project, love will go on. Compassion, however, will be temporarily part of the job. But don't worry. I don't see that. You have job security if you're a compassionate person. That's in some sense the difference between love.

[04:27]

So, in that sense, love is eternal as long as there's a galaxy, as long as there's a universe. So love, compassion, however, has its more limited forms. At this point, you're both united, because in love there is compassion, and in compassion there is love. When love comes to a person who's suffering, love manifests as compassion. Love's there all the time. Okay, that's number one. Number two is just a little piece of information for you, just so you can understand this morning's poem. And that is, there's an expression from the Parinirvana Sutra, the Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which is the image of giving children yellow paper to stop them from crying. Chinese, maybe it's Chinese, either rendering or Sanskrit, I don't remember.

[05:31]

The idea is children are crying, so you give them some yellow paper and they stop crying because you gave them some gold. They think it's gold. You stop crying. You usually don't give children gold, though. It's not necessary. Yellow paper does fine. In fact, they're not really expecting to be responsible for taking care of gold. Also, they could swallow it and get sick. Or choke on it. Whereas papers are less sick. Sicker, they can take better care of it. The Parinirvana Sutra is more. Anyway, it stops them from crying. Some of the teaching which is given in Buddhism is just yellow paper to help people stop crying. So it's not actually gold. And in fact, if you give them the gold, they can get hurt on it. And also, if you give them the gold, well, they can get hurt on it by what they do with it themselves, but also someone might beat them up and take it from them, right? I can't be responsible for it.

[06:31]

And it could hurt them. It could hurt them, gold. It could, yes, it's true. But I think a chunk of gold would be a little bit more dangerous than paper. I think so. You don't think so? Well, then you live in a different conventional universe than me. So fine, you can share with that one of you and this one. That's the image anyway. And in terms of our teaching here, you see that, for example, what is it? Master Ma actually taught that, he said one time that, somebody said, what's Buddha? He said, mind itself is Buddha. And then, later a monk came up to him and said,

[07:33]

I understand you teach that mind itself is Buddha. And he said, yeah, I do, but I just do that to help people stop, help children stop crying. He said, well, when they stop crying, what do you give them? He said, then I say, no mind, no Buddha. So that's an example of, the goal is no mind, no Buddha. You know, Zazen has nothing to do with you. That kind of thing. But if you give that teaching to children, they can't take responsibility and might get hurt on it. For example, they say, well, if Zazen's got nothing to do with me, then I'm not going to practice it anymore. Or, I guess I can do whatever I want and that'll be Zazen, huh? Anyway, it does not mean those things. But that's what a child's reaction to that might be. But, if you say mind is Buddha, then you sort of like, well, better take care of it, huh?

[08:35]

Better have a nice spiffy mind or, you know, keep your eye on it, because it's Buddha. And stop crying. After a while, when you're not crying anymore, you can tell your goal in teaching, because you're more mature. And, so, actually some people get into, what happens sometimes is people get into troubling over the yellow paper. That sometimes happens, that the Buddha or some Zen teacher, other kind of Buddha's teacher, gives yellow paper to people, to get them to calm down and relax a little bit. For example, you're fine with yellow paper. Yellow paper is not false. It's just not, you know, the ultimate teaching. Ultimate teaching is something that will... That, once in a while, you're fine, might be the ultimate teaching, and push somebody over the edge into total realization. But usually, for most people, that's just yellow paper. But there's other kinds of teachings too, that are yellow papers, which are given.

[09:37]

And then some people get that yellow paper, and then they kind of like make stacks of it, and card catalog it, and stuff like that, and say, no, that shouldn't be there. And some people over there, and then they actually get into a little dharma combat about the yellow paper, which is fine, you know. But anyway, you should understand, what you're doing is you're tripping over yellow paper. That's why, the Yashant, when he came in, he talked insanely, because he's actually a poor old guy, doesn't have any yellow paper anymore. I go back to my room. The what? The bones in the, the cold in the bones, and the bones in the cold. A foolish child troubles over yellow paper. Or, you know, in quotes, money. In fact, he says yellow paper. Used to stop crime.

[10:39]

A good steed chases the wind. You know what steed means? Horse. A good horse chases the wind. That means a good horse runs fast. At the shadow of the whip. Looking back, at the shadow of the whip. Clouds sweep the eternal sky, nesting in the moon, crane. Cold clarity gets into her bones. She can't go to sleep. Poor thing. The shadow of the whip. That's the Yashant, you know,

[11:41]

climbing up on the seat, and sitting there for a little bit, and then getting down, and going back to the room. That's the shadow of the whip. Good horses start charging off to the horizon at that time, but the director, tripling over, you know, that wasn't the paper you said you were going to deliver. So if a Zen master gets invited to a conference where they're supposed to deliver papers, it's nice. Yes? But if he's actually just going to take a seat, that can't be considered yellow paper right there? You can consider it whatever you want. The director didn't. The director didn't think that was yellow paper or gold. And he went and cried. He didn't even get to stop crying. But you can consider it yellow paper if you want to. That's fine. Okay. Now, the other thing,

[12:42]

there's something Gabe said at the end of class, which I'll mention what he said, and it'll come up again maybe in a minute. I don't know exactly the context, but I said something about how, you know, there's the self, you know, first, and then there's self-cleaning. First you have to have, like, the solidified self. You have to make a self into something. You have to grab it. If you have a self, you have some sense of self, but it's not like a... It's not like an identity thing. It's an identifiable, substantial thing. It's hard for you to get a hold of it. However, however, you can identify a self by using a word, a conventional word,

[13:44]

and you can identify the self. So a self can be identified, and you might be able to identify it without then sort of making it substantial. It might be possible. In which case, there wouldn't be, couldn't be. And I would say, couldn't be. This is very related. So if you have a self appearing, something appearing, and if you could apply the name self to this, this whatever this is, and keep track at that moment, that by applying the word to it, by that very applying the word to it, you did that, that's, you're applying the word, it kind of co-arises. Then you don't, then the self doesn't congeal into a substance, and you don't grab it. If you understood, if you knew the teaching that, if you knew the teaching of, if you had the teaching of Nagarjuna and already had him, and you watched the self come up, and you watched this thing come up, and then you gave it a name, you gave it the name word,

[14:45]

and then you watched how that identified it, and gave it identity, and you kept track of that, at that time, you emptied it. By seeing your, your conventional operation. But, mostly we don't do that, so what we usually do is, as soon as self forms, and we get, and it's forming itself as an identity, there's a word there, as soon as that happens, it becomes reified, the substantial thing, and then we grasp it. I think Gabe's point was, it isn't really like, first it's solidified, and then you grasp it. Isn't it like that, that the moment, at the same time of solidifying, is grasping? At the very time of solidifying, there's this, these other kinds of afflictions, I don't know if you said that word, but I think you said, that's simultaneous. Yeah, yeah, well the, there was no, the, there would be this metaphysical self, that that,

[15:46]

sort of, that that was grasping, grasping is what makes it a metaphysical self. So a metaphysical self is a, is a self that's more than just something that dependently co-arises. A metaphysical self is something more than just the physics of it, you know, the psychophysics of it, something above that, or next door to that, or whatever. So he was saying, that as soon as you have a metaphysical self, it's already grasping. I think that's kind of right, logically speaking though, it's kind of like, there's a logical sequence, but in terms of actual case, you think about how you would make the thing into this little package, as soon as you do that, there's grasping. And, so these Nagarjuna, what is it, Vasubandhu says that as soon as a sense of self arises, it's four afflictions arise. Self-view, self-ignorance, self-clean, self-pride, and self-love. And so sometimes we say, as soon as this happens, this comes up, this sense of self, and then these four afflictions come up. But in a way,

[16:47]

you can see that these four afflictions almost like build the self. Because, the self, you have to have a self-view in order for that thing to have any existence for you. If you like, look and see the self, or see from the self, something has to be kind of at the same time. And also, you kind of have to have self-ignorance in order to have this unity, and this identity itself, you kind of have to look away from it, in order to sort of like, really see its identity. You kind of have to look away from it at the word. You know, then you can see the identity. If you look right at it, it's just like, you know, this radiant, dependent core rising, you can't actually, you can't actually ignore it. And you're not ignoring it. When you don't ignore it, it won't form. The metaphysical self won't come together to keep your eye on the conventionally arising self. So in a way, I think it is, they are simultaneous there. But, but, yeah, they're simultaneous. And then,

[17:47]

as a self forms, and gets to be substantial, there's simultaneously a looking away from it. And then that looking away from the self, when looking away from what you've made, then suffering arises. So the key here is to, in a sense, turn around and look back at the supposedly substantial self existence. Stop refusing to pay attention to this thing. And that will be painful because you're going to have to look back at the suffering. You can't like, you can't look away from the self and look away from the suffering and look back at the self. Once you ignore the self and it's solid, to get back, to get a look back at it, you're going to have to look through the suffering that's all around it now, which we don't want to look at.

[18:48]

Actually, we don't want to look at the self either, but now it's doubly bad. So we get to face suffering and lose this new metaphysical self. But then we lose the source of suffering, which is what Nagarjuna is thinking about. So, this reification, this solidifying of the simple self is, you know, it's perfectly natural for us, even though it's incoherent. So Nagarjuna and Kanjizai Bosatsu and Bodhidharma and Dogen and Suzukiyoshi and so and so, they all want us to graciously break free of this habit and pull out this root. I'd like to say a little bit more about gracious. To graciously

[20:05]

cut a root or do certain things, I just want to put in a good word for it, that gracious could be, gracious is sometimes a clean cut. That sometimes is called gracious. It may not seem gentle, but sometimes the most gentle thing is to go nice and clear. Like pulling off, you know, pulling off a bandage from the arm, you know, the baby's crying, don't pull it, don't pull it, don't pull it. Whereas, you know, people who do this all the time usually go, just one instant of suffering rather than 56 or whatever, you know, round and round. That's the best way sometimes, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes the best way is like really slowly, really slowly. The question is, what is gracious?

[21:05]

What is, you know, responsive? The way to get in there and get at the thing and drop. Now, I want to say again here, which you said it, but if we do this, you know, if you get in there and look back at the, at that place and see that this self is dependent co-arisen and therefore empty, gotta be careful then, don't go too far, stay upright, don't fall into nihilism. That's what I want you to do. And the way you fall into nihilism is, how do you fall into nihilism? At that point? Huh?

[22:05]

I don't. What? I don't exist. Nothing matters is a result of nihilism. In terms of like, get into the situation of like, you're turning back and looking at this self. Okay? Okay. And you're saying, I don't exist, but how do you make that nihilism? You make it an object. You make it an object. What kind of an object? Imagined. Well, it's, objects are imagined. Real? Inherently existing, right? So, you look at the, you look at the, at the, see the dependent co-arising of this self now, you don't, no longer, it's no longer a metaphysical self, it's a, it's a self that arises out of the physics of the situation. Okay? You see that, it tries to empty itself and then you make that emptiness into a thing and it turns into nihilism. Okay? So we have to remember the emptiness of the emptying. Right? So when you, when the emptying starts to happen, you have to remember that when you see the emptying,

[23:06]

you just put a word on the emptying. Because in order for you to experience the emptying, which you might experience, which is a big relief. Now, if you don't experience the emptying, that's fine too, but it's helpful to experience the emptying. It's helpful. So, since it's helpful, you experience it. How do you experience it? By dependently co-arising it, co-producing it. What are the producers? One of the producers is the word emptying, or emptiness. Conventional word, you bring in the conventional in and you're hooking up this wonderful emptying of the self with conventionality. Therefore, it dependently co-arises and it's nothing more than the word it's empty too. So then, since it's empty, you don't fall into nihilism. You don't then use this emptiness to club yourself over the head and knock your null sense out of your head. Okay? You don't go senseless.

[24:10]

If one relinquishes the reification of things, but then reifies emptiness of them, that would just usher in a new grasping for... Huh? For emptiness. A new grasping for the ceasing of this production, the nirvana of this production of the metaphysical self. Then you start grabbing for that, which is a little bit worse, I would say. But certainly, you haven't really achieved anything. In a way, you're in more trouble. But also, it's kind of 50-50 because you also have made great strides. So you made great strides, but then you're going to get sent back because of grabbing your strides. Only in the simultaneous realization of the empty, the empty, but conventional

[25:17]

reality of the self, or any phenomenon, only in the simultaneous realization of the empty, but conventional reality of self. And the emptiness of emptiness can suffering be wholly and peacefully and graciously and continually approved. Only in the simultaneous realization of the empty and conventional quality of the precepts. And the emptiness of emptiness

[26:18]

can thoroughly approved suffering. Only in the empty, only in the simultaneous realization of the empty and conventional quality of anything, with the realization of the emptiness of emptiness can you fully and graciously and effectively and not backslidingly approved suffering. How are you doing? Is it hot? No. Not hot? It's stuffy?

[27:23]

How are you doing? Want a little bit more presentation before the discussion? I'm not ready to go on quite yet myself. I want to do a little bit more on this. This is really just a little bit stuff we're doing. I think in our next morning class we can dash through it. There are 25 cards. We're pretty much, you know, we're sitting at the, what about, we're sitting at the center of the whole thing right now, center of the whole book, this card, 2418. We're well situated and there's implications we can draw. This is the pivot here. I'm fine, I'm cooling myself,

[28:29]

cooling my jets. So you want more presentation? Some people want a big presentation, 10 characters or two. Some people want... Do you want to chat a little bit more? Are you ready? If we were ready, we wouldn't be ready. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit more about a couple of things. I want to talk about emptiness of emptiness and the two truths. The teaching of the emptiness of emptiness emerges directly from this card, which we've already looked at, right? Emptiness is empty

[29:30]

because it dependently co-arises with... It is characterized by dependently co-arising. The emptiness of emptiness comes forth from the identification of emptiness with the property of being dependently co-arising. And with the property of having an identity just by virtue of this conventional verbal designation. So emptiness of something, for it to have an identity, it needs to have a word. Because its identity depends on convention, on a verbal designation, because of that, its identity is empty.

[30:31]

Emptiness doesn't have an identity except conventionally. Therefore, it is empty in that way. And it's also empty because it has the property of dependently co-arising. Because emptiness arises on something. Emptiness is about phenomena. And this is just the same as conventional things. And the fact that emptiness... that the identification of emptiness with dependently co-arising and that emptiness having an identity depends on conventional designation. The fact that emptiness is nothing more than this makes it empty. Just as conventional phenomena, in general,

[31:34]

are nothing more than conventional. And they dependently co-arise. And that makes them empty. So this teaching of emptiness as emptiness can be seen as entirely linked up with the account of the relationship between the two truths. Conventional truth and ultimate truth. And again, from this karaka, you can see that to distinguish between conventional reality and ultimate reality is a mistake at the ontological level. In other words, at the level of being, it would be a mistake to distinguish between conventional truth and ultimate truth. Because conventional truth and ultimate truth

[32:34]

are about the same being. They aren't about two different beings. Conventional truth is about conventional truth. Conventional truth is about conventional phenomena. And emptiness is about conventional phenomena. And ultimate truth is just the fact that conventional phenomena are conventional phenomena. So at the level of being, the two truths are no different. The two truths are just two different ways of perceiving the conventional. The funny thing about the conventional is that it's conventional to perceive the conventional as inherently existing. But to perceive the conventional as just a conventional is to perceive it as empty, which is its ultimate mode. So it's the same thing. There's only conventional existence. And conventional existence is empty. But to see conventional existence as existing inherently,

[33:36]

that's conventional. And to see the same thing in a non-conventional way is the ultimate view of it. So they're really one and the same being, and two really different ways of seeing the same situation. From the conventional point of view, this world is a world of self and other. It's a world of existent things. From the ultimate point of view, it's a world of things that conventionally exist but have no inherent reality. And these two worlds seem really different but really they're the same thing. So this Karaka connects back with Karaka 8 particularly,

[34:38]

in which we choose certain degrees, and Karaka 10, where it shows that only by understanding the conventional can you receive the ultimate teaching. The ultimate teaching is totally understanding that the conventional is conventional. And also, that the conventional being conventional is always conventional to see the conventional as conventional. It's not open, but it's not really here. So, once you have those two truths clarified, you can go ahead and enjoy both watching the conventional appear and see how it appears, and therefore see how it's empty. Also, you can watch this particular and rather typical way that the conventional appears as assuming that the conventional is inherently existent. You can watch that too, and empty the conventional phenomena

[35:40]

and also empty the attribution of substance to conventional phenomena. And by balancing all these different elements, finally we achieve what's called the middle way. But you can see how difficult it is to balance this tremendous dynamic moment by moment. That's the job of the Bodhisattva. So, that's maybe enough presentation. For me, I can do more if you want. You do? Okay. When you say that the conventional truth and the ultimate truth are the same thing... I didn't say they're the same thing. I said it would be a mistake to distinguish between them

[36:44]

in terms of being. To say that they're two different modes of being. To put them on two different levels, to say that one has a higher level of being, a lower level of being, because the ultimate is about the conventional. And what does the ultimate have to say about the conventional? Not quite nothing, but just simply that that's all it is. That's all the ultimate does. It has to say... Like I was talking about the precept of stealing. And I talked about what stealing is, how stealing... I talked a little bit about how stealing is... I talked about the dependent co-arising of stealing. How you seem to depend and co-arise with... Somebody thinks somebody's got something that wasn't given to them. And somebody has that view. And that view could be the person who has it. Like you could think you have something that wasn't given to you. Okay? Or... And then you think you were a thief. Or someone else could think you had something that wasn't given to you.

[37:47]

And they would think you're a thief. So it depends on somebody, either the thief and the accuser, or one of them, thinking that somebody has something that wasn't given to them. Plus, in addition to that, to really make it come in solid, you need to verify that it was true, that it wasn't given. Those two together, you know, in a lot of cases, is sufficient conditions for the dependent co-arising of thievery. However, you can see that that's empty, because take away one of those things, and the person is no longer a thief. They weren't inherently a thief. They're just something that was conjured up. And that's a conventional story about how you make... That's a general proposition about how you can eventually ascertain thievery and thieves. What's the ultimate point of view on that? It's really nothing more than that story is a conventional story, and it's nothing more than a conventional story. That's the ultimate point of view. And therefore, it dependently co-arises. It's nothing more than convention.

[38:49]

It dependently co-arises, and it's empty. That's the ultimate point of view on the story. And also, the ultimate point of view, in order to talk about it, had to use... That dependently co-arose on the story, and also had to use words to specify both the story and the emptiness of the story. Therefore, the emptiness of the story is also... The ultimate position is also empty. But it's all in the same realm of being, so in that way, you couldn't distinguish between the two truths. Did you follow that? Not the last statement, but without... So, those two points of view, like when you watch and establish the conventionality of determining what a thief or a thiever's feeling is, you see that come together, and then you see how that empties, and then you also have to empty your view of its emptiness. And the way you do that is to realize that the emptiness is also dependent on the dependently co-arising quality.

[39:51]

So, it dependently co-arose. Plus, in order to specify the emptiness of a thing, you have to bring in the conventional term empty. So, emptiness... The actual view that this thing is empty is also empty. So, the thing is not, like, really empty, because it's also really conventionally existent. It's both simultaneously. So, in that way, the ultimate view and the conventional view can't be pulled apart. They're in the same realm of being. So, to distinguish between them and to separate them, they should sound really different. They should sound really different, and they shouldn't melt into each other at all. But they're dealing with the same... They're the same thing, and the same thing should sound really different. And if you start to blend, you're losing the dynamic quality of reality, of the two truths. And if you separate them, really, then you're making a mistake, too.

[40:54]

Dylan? I don't really feel like this, when I'm thinking about it. When I'm feeling this frustration, and I don't know if anyone has a question, I feel like expressing my frustration. It seems like in this class, I feel like what I'm trying to do is use the conventional to dismantle the conventional. It seems like we're accumulating conventional tools and conventional understandings with conventional processes of reason and rationales to try to dismantle something that is conventionally assembled. It's kind of like trying to get your finger to point to itself. I feel like I'm following my finger all around, but it can't seem to point to itself. And it seems like without some kind of a realization of this, in non-intellectual or non-rational terms, a different kind of experience,

[42:01]

that I'm accumulating a lot of information which I'm kind of incorporating into my conventional being. And it almost feels like I'm adding more baggage to my conventional being that, in a way, only emphasizes my non-freedom and my non-liberation idea. I keep thinking, wow, it would really be great to realize this stuff because it sounds great and I'm all for it, but it seems more and more clear to me that I'm not realizing it in anything other than a conventional way. How are you realizing it in a conventional way? By understanding it in a rational, in a word-structured, organized format so that I can sit down and maybe, you know, maybe I can explain this stuff to somebody else now, but it still hasn't affected my life. And, you know,

[43:03]

the confusion, the bewilderment that I feel in this class I don't feel like is due to the nature of the material. Although it should be disturbing to hear that you are conventionally non-existent and that there isn't any self. No, no, you didn't hear that. You're not conventionally non-existent. Yeah, you're conventionally existent, but that there isn't any, you know, the self you've been clinging to for however many years. Can I just take this to the secretary? I thought I heard you say that the bewilderment you feel is not due to this class? No. What is it due to? It's not due to the nature of the material. What's it due to? Or the content of the material. Sorry, what's it due to? The nature of the material. Hm? The nature of the material. Your bewilderment is due to the nature of what material? Of the material that's presented in the class. You're in a belt, let me see. He said that his bewilderment is due to the nature of the material presented in the class.

[44:05]

Did he say that? Oh, yeah, sorry. Can I just point out, can I comment? Please. Before I deal with... I like to deal with, first of all, the fact that the wonderful thing about the teaching of emptiness is that it is to understand that our bewilderment is the four bodies of Buddha. Which you said you have not yet realized, right? That your bewilderment is the Buddha. That's what this is about. This is about understanding our bewilderment. Number two, which doesn't directly relate to what you said, is that in studying this material, some people get in touch with being bewildered.

[45:09]

But my view is, which my bewilderment is, is that it's not this material that is the source of our bewilderment. This material is only a gracious opportunity to realize that we are bewildered critters. It's not the material that makes me bewildered. Not the mountains. It's not Nagarjuna. It's not Red Anderson. It's not Tassajara. It's not Dylan. Nothing makes us bewildered. Bewilderment, I suppose, comes from someplace else, and I've said a number of times where I think it's coming from. But I don't think it comes from any phenomenon like a book, a class, a person, a wound. It comes from someplace else. So I would say this class has been very successful

[46:15]

to the extent that one or more persons have gotten in touch with a sense of bewilderment. Now, maybe those same persons were vividly in touch with their bewilderment before they took the class, and then there was some other thing that they said was the cause of their bewilderment. But if we are able to move through life and notice that there's a series of possible things that are causing our bewilderment, we may eventually notice that the list of things that are causing our bewilderment is getting longer and longer, and pretty soon it's basically the universe is causing our bewilderment. And then we might say, well, okay. So that's a given. Me, you. Yeah, there you go. That's it. Grazie, grazie. I don't believe it. No, you must be kidding. That's that story.

[47:16]

You know that story, right? That story. You know that story. That's one of the main stories of our school, right? About that guy. That guy lost. Remember him? Huh? What? You know that guy in the Lotus Sutra? That kid? He had a really nice home. Remember him? His father was like, his father wasn't a king. His father was like, you know, what do you call it? He owned a free, you know, historical, what do you call it? What do you call it? Mega, what do you call it? What do you call these things? Multi-dimensional, multi-national. He owned a multi-national conglomerate. He had kings on his staff. But, you know, he was so busy with his stuff that his kid ran down the golden staircase and got lost one day, right? You know that story? You don't know that story? You're going to have to hear the story. You know that story? You know that story. So the kid got lost. But then, since he was lost,

[48:17]

he wanted to get home, so he started looking for his home, so he got more lost. And then he got more lost, and finally he got really lost. So lost that he was, like, lost way out there. And he got lost for, like, 50 years. You know, and he was just a kid when he left, so, you know, here he was, this 50-year-old guy, didn't know his name or anything. And, of course, you know, so he couldn't get any jobs because he didn't even know if he, like, you know, he didn't even know if he was, like, a peasant since he did peasant work. Couldn't even, like, say, well, I'd like to, you know, work on the farm or something. He didn't even know if he should be a farmer. So he basically just starved to death almost practically, and he was just a wreck. So this 50- to 57-year-old wreck just wandered about the world somehow working on a living, and he was an emaciated, destitute guy. And he just happened, by chance, to wander back into his, the neighborhood where his parents happened to be living and stroll by this, you know, celestial palace they lived in and looked up the stairs and saw his parents just happened to be sitting on the veranda with their, you know,

[49:18]

royal attendants. And he looked up there and saw them, and they looked down and saw him, but his parents, you know, somehow could, you know, through genetic programming could tell that it was their little boy who had now kind of, like, was an emaciated wreck but they still could see it was their kid. So the father sent one of his attendants and said, Go get him! Look, Martha, look who it is! So they ran down to get him. So this guy sees this, you know, these great beings up there on the porch, you know, sending these attendants down, storming down the stairs to get him. He thinks, Oh my God, what are they going to do to me? You know, probably going to, like, eliminate me from, you know, I'm like a blight on their stairway. So he faints. And the father sees that and understands, you know, that, Oh, I see the situation. I thought we were going to hurt him. So he called back the attendants and left him alone. And the guy sort of revived from his swooning and thought, Oh God, I survived. They didn't kill me. That's good.

[50:19]

He wandered off. They were pretty happy, actually. They were still alive. Then the father got an idea. They sent, he had one of his attendants to dress up in, you know, ship cover, rag, and go up to the guy and offer him a job to shovel elephant shit. And the guy said, Wow, great. That's a good job for me. I can handle that. Maybe I can get a little, can you give me some food for it? He says, yeah. So he shoveled elephant shit and fed him. He felt good. And he did that for 20 years. And after 20 years, Yeah, his dad's getting up there. That will be a key ingredient soon. Anyway, so after 20 years, his father gets dressed up and rags and goes down and says, Well, you've been doing a good job. You know, I'd like to promote you to chairman of the crew. I mean, not chairman, manager of the crew, straw balls. The guy said, No, I can handle that. He accepts the responsibility

[51:20]

to be in charge of this operation because he's learned it and has some confidence in himself. So he does that for another 20 years and the father comes down again and says, Now the father's dressed in more normal outfit and says, You've been doing a good job being managers. Now I'd like to give you a promotion. You can come up and live in that big house up there and learn how the whole thing works. And the guy said, Okay, I can do that. He learns all about how the house works. And then the father says, Well, Martha, we're getting on in years now. We're not going to live much longer. We probably should, you know, hand over the thing to our kid and tell him what's going on. So he gathers together all this, all his tinkered, tinkered and said, You know, I've been treating this guy in my house, I've been treating him like he's my kid, you know, teaching him all about things, and actually he is my kid. This is my son. And the son says, Oh my God, you know, your son is great. Huh,

[52:21]

that's wonderful. You could accept him. Thank you. So, you know, actually Buddha is going drazi all the time to us, right? But we said, Oh no, not this, couldn't be. Keep thinking, Oh no. But then slowly shovel shifts, you know. And for 10, 20, 50 years, they're pretty similar. Now you can be a Zen master. So pretty soon, after a while, they actually give you the gold, and you say, Oh yeah, thanks. It's kind of like that. We had a question at the end. Did you call my name? What was the reason you called my name? You have my attention when I'm going like this.

[53:22]

If you think I have something that wasn't given to me, what does that mean? Whatever goes into my seeing you as a being, yes, concrete, yes, very separate from me, I'm assuming, yeah, then you're suffering, right. I'm giving you an essence of, yeah, yes, then you're suffering, yes, of course. So, I'm suffering. And so if I see, really, that you're, that's a, that's more to it than when I see you? No, not more to it. No, that's not dependent co-arising. Dependent co-arising would be to see how you constructed me as a being. So the conditions that arose for me to be, Not the conditions that arose, but the conditions that gave rise to you, you seeing me as a being. How, how these things came together for you to have this view of me as a being.

[54:41]

Oh, and since I see that there are many conditions, then I know, there's not something hard there. Yes. So has then my heart softened then? You have softened? Your heart softened before that. Your heart softened when you were willing to open to the conditions. When your heart's hard, when your heart's hard, you're not open to the conditions. You're hard, you know. Just there's a thing over there, no conditions. Just a thing. And at that moment, you're just totally obsessional. You're obsessed. The obsessions are in charge. They've got you encased. As soon as there start to be conditions, as soon as there's conditions, the emptiness starts, the dependent co-arising starts to form, the emptiness starts looming, the conditions start, the obsessions start waning. As the dependent co-arising story starts to manifest fully, the heart's more and more open. Okay? When the heart's really open,

[55:45]

the thing's emptied, and also, emptiness is emptied. So it isn't that you open your heart, it isn't just that you open your heart to this thing, finally, you open the heart up, you open the opening of the heart up too. In other words, you don't even have a heart anymore. And then you end up suffering really, absolutely. But just to start to see a crack, just to start to be suspicious of your view of this person as a thief, just to start to be suspicious of our view of the raccoons, just to start to be suspicious of our view of the blue jays, just to start to be suspicious of our view of Anna. She's not really that beautiful. Okay?

[56:59]

That's both that your heart's opening to the coherent, but uncontrollable, dependent coercion, conventional world. And it's coherent in its conventionality only. That's all there is to it. And to open up to the fact that that's all we've got, is our stories. And to live with that. You have a closed heart that can't stand that. It's a total threat. If your heart opens, you can more and more open to that, to the conventionalities, conventionality, and now that it isn't just a theory anymore, you can see how the conventionalities come together. And then you're going, you're cooking. But you have to open to the stuff. It isn't just theoretical. So that's why it's good, you know, if you have to feel your bewilderment, you know, and it's got a little teeth in it, and it hurts a little bit. Bewilderment is not necessarily comfortable. Anybody got a comfortable world of bewilderment? Fine.

[58:02]

But how about some other kinds of bewilderment? Don't you have some of those, too? Well, you do. I think you do. Like that class, that last nighttime class. It was dark and bewildering. But, you know, they did good work there, even though nobody knew them. And by the way, I have something to talk to you about, Dan. Charlie? Is there any way to put the two truths, Ian around or Theresa? Yeah. Do you want me to show you two truths on here? Yeah, two truths are... Where's the conventional truth? Right there. Where do you get... How do you get conventional truth?

[59:02]

By dependent co-arising. It depends on co-arising. We have conventions. Conventional truth conventions. We get together, we get elements, together we make a conventional truth. Because conventional truth depends on co-arising, because it depends on co-arising, it must be empty. What about ultimate truth? Ultimate truth is... What's ultimate truth? Ultimate truth is... It is conventional. It's just conventional. Nothing more. Why do you know it's nothing more? Because it depends on co-arising, doesn't it? And also, if it's empty, it means it's just conventional. That's ultimate truth. Same situation. Same case. Same example. Whatever your example is, your idea of yourself, your idea of me, my idea of myself, my idea of you, our understanding of the precepts, our understanding of emptiness, all of these interests right here in the same place. And the fact that they're the same thing is another aspect of the Middle Way.

[60:06]

Middle Way is... Mahayana is fundamentally... The characteristic of Mahayana is to understand emptiness in addition to dependent co-arising. Other forms of Buddhism understand dependent co-arising, but they don't necessarily understand emptiness of it. The Middle Way, that Naraduna is pointing out here, is that not just to understand dependent co-arising, but to understand that it's empty. And not just to understand that it's empty, but to understand that its emptiness is empty. That's what's wonderful about his teachings, by putting this conventional thing in here. He then connects dependent co-arising with that, which of course it is. And of course he connects conventionally co-arising with emptiness. But also, he not only empties dependent co-arising by making it... Narada empties emptiness by making it dependently co-arisen, he makes it empty by making it conventional. And again, emptiness is just about the conventional. And what about the conventional? It's just the conventional. And it's also equal to the conventional.

[61:13]

So it's conventional. So it's empty. This is Naraduna's wonderful contribution to clarifying the Buddha's teachings. Which I think he's saying, this is just a revolution, just turn around, back to zero again. This is Buddha. He said Buddha taught this. Now it's getting close to the final hour. Is there one more hand? There's a whole bunch of them. So... Does somebody... Now I have Peter and Wendy and Jeremy. Is there somebody else? And Mark and Julia? OK. Let's see if we can go fast. Wendy? OK. I was thinking about something. And what it was is that it seems to me that when I am suffering and I really feel awful, I'm actually...

[62:15]

I feel like I'm in a panic of some sort. And I realize that most situations are not in my mind or in my heart. It seems that I've actually imagined something and I'm totally creative and I have no idea whether it's true or not. When something really happens, I don't feel a panic even if I feel something, you know, like positive or negative. And when you were talking about uplifting suffering, I was thinking about how the teaching says you don't stop feeling pain or pleasure. It's the suffering that stops. And so I was wondering if that's the kind of... if that's, you know, on a practical level that we can talk about. Yes. Gabe. Too far, Phil?

[63:19]

Yes. Okay. Peter. Okay. I've worked here, especially here, with emptying suffering in various situations. And... Emptying suffering? No, I mean... I mean, seeing the emptiness of certain situations... Emptiness of situations. I don't want to say that. So I was wondering how do you get close enough to... I mean, how do you actually come to a point of emptying stuff that you're talking about earlier? You said... I think you said how do you get close to... to seeing that the self is... the self is... is actually non-living. How do you get close to seeing that? You get close to the pain, first of all. Number one.

[64:19]

Get close to the pain. Of any situation? Or just any? Any. Any situation. Not any situation. This one. Get close to this pain. First step. Okay? And how do you get close to this pain? Don't go away from this pain. How do you get close to it? Should you go towards it? No. Go away from it? No. In other words, how do you get close to it? Don't move. Don't move. This pain. Don't move. Pain. Don't move. Pain. Don't move. Pain. Don't move. And keep breathing. Pain. Don't move. Pain. How do you get close to this pain? That's how you get close. It's already close. You just don't run away. You get close. That's what you want. When you're close and stable, the cause of the pain will be clear. The cause of the pain will show itself to you. It's just the obsession with the cause of the pain.

[65:20]

See the obsession? Observing the obsession. Clearly observing. Standing with them, moment by moment. You'll see the dependent co-arising of the obsession. You'll see the dependent co-arising of the thing you're obsessing about. You'll see the dependent co-arising of the emptiness. It comes out with suffering. And you start to realize the substantiality of the whole process. And there you'll be with whatever it is. Pain, pleasure, blah, blah, blah. Whatever you're talking about. The suffering will come. And also, you stay with that. And also, don't make that experience... Also realize that that's just... When you experience it, as it becomes an experience, it's just another conventional thing. It's dependent co-arising. So you don't grab that either. So then you can go away. You don't get stuck there. That's how you do it. Very simple. Hard part is starting. You move. Blah, blah, blah. Well, it seems that you were implying

[66:22]

that when you can... see the dependent co-arising and the non-existence of the self as a reality. The real seeing of that. Because that's a big realization. It's a realization that really changes everything. That's right. It does. So that's what you're talking about. I don't like that. Because you said it just... That's part of what I'm talking about. It's a small part, actually. Sort of the point of the whole thing. But mostly I'm talking about how to just face what's happening. That's what I'm talking about. Because that's most important. Everybody's got to get on that train first. Once we're on the train, we can get into wonderful subtleties and realizations. But first of all, it's all about getting in the water. Hey, Jeremy. Since I was addressed early in the evening, I just wanted to try and clarify really briefly what I was saying today. And I didn't mean to say there's any special characteristic of the world that made it lovable.

[67:23]

But it's that love wasn't dependent upon even loving. Which I think we need to clarify. And that's all I was trying to say. And I would like to apologize for my sloppy language. If I implied... If I... I should have... When speaking to Jeremy on that occasion, I should have spoken more in a tone of... You know, the way you're talking, I hear you saying this. Something more like that. Rather than suggesting he might be a certain type of philosopher. Okay, well, it's time to go to bed. I've got three minutes. With which Martin can get in on there. Okay. Was it Mr. Black Hat that sent Mr. White Hat down the well to look for the jewels and stole his clothes? Yeah. Or is it the other way around? Mr. Black Hat taught Mr. White Hat he'd be going down to the pit.

[68:26]

And Mr. Black Hat was way high? Mr. Black Hat was why high, right? Why high? He wasn't way high. I don't know Chinese. So, why high is that when I get to this stage I don't say anything at all? I don't know anything at all. Having come this, after all, coming this far, I don't understand anything at all. Okay, so here's my question. Is that equivalent to when you say, you know, you're opening your heart and you get to a point you don't have a heart anymore? Is that like the same thing that way high was? You know, he's getting to some point that he doesn't understand anything at all.

[69:26]

Like he has no more concepts that there's a self, there's an other, there's a heart, there's a world. Does it, you know, does it go that far? I mean, like, is that what he's talking about? You don't even have a concept? Is that what you're saying? You don't even have the concept of a heart anymore? You know, it does go that far, but then you have to go beyond that. People get that point, but he went beyond that. Beyond which point? Beyond the point of not having any concept of self or other. That still would be like, what do you call it, have some taint to it. There has to be not even any trace of non-discrimination. It has to be completely ordinary, conventional person. Okay? Because Bodhisattvas, you know, have to come back completely into conventionality again. They can't have their realization separate from conventionality, otherwise they can't operate as Bodhisattvas. But it's not just because of that, it's also because they're into reality. And reality is, two truths are the same thing.

[70:30]

You don't flip over into the ultimate and be out of touch with conventional conception and so on. Yes, Linda? Well, what is it? After all I don't understand, is that him getting back into a convention? Is it? Is it? Sounds pretty conventional to me. I could understand it. Conventionally. I could understand it. That's all I can understand. That's why ultimately the Nagarjuna teacher should be a big relief, because you can just be a conventional girl again, a conventional guy. You don't have to be special, just come back to ordinary convention. You don't have to have, and just let, and also just let it be that. However, once again, one more time, it is perfectly natural for us human beings to make more of it than that. And this is called sad. Sad. We can't stand and just be kind of like simple little creatures that we are. We can't, it's hard for us. We can, by practicing Zen, learn to be regular human beings.

[71:38]

And I think you people are doing a pretty good job of that. Pretty willing to accept and not be, you know, whatever it is, way off the ground. You know, you take care of your Oreo keys, sweep the ground, paint the cabins. For some of you get way high. Okay. And so do I sometimes. But then, you know, my teeth get a little flushed, a little hot up here below the eyes, and I realize it's going to come back to work. Okay, so I think now we're ready to dash ahead in our next class. And I just want to say that we're going to have small groups tomorrow night, and have a good time. No, tomorrow night.

[72:41]

Small groups tomorrow night. Tomorrow night. Small groups. Have fun. And I'll see you in the Zendo tomorrow, okay? Alright? Alright. What did you say? Alright.

[72:54]

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