One of the disciples of Buddha who is greatly appreciated by many disciples of Buddha is named Nagarjuna. And he supposedly wrote some verses which are called the Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. And in the first verse of all these verses is, well, before I tell you the verse, let me say that he said basically, homage to the great teacher who graciously gave us the teaching of dependent co-arising to relieve the world. And then the first verse after this invocation was, Nothing, whatsoever, anywhere, at any time, is produced by something other than itself, is produced by both, or has no cause.

[01:31]

that's produced by itself, by something other than itself, by both, or comes to be by no cause. There's no such thing. So when we're practicing, for example, when you're sitting, existing as a practitioner, you do not produce yourself, your practice does not produce itself. Nobody else, nothing else produces you. And you're not produced by both something else and yourself, and you're not there for no cause. You together with the whole universe is dependently co-arising at this moment. This is the way we are. It's ungraspable. But we can realize it by making our practice like that.

[02:49]

Making our sitting, letting our sitting be what it is. Something that depends on the whole universe and something that the whole universe depends on. We don't cause other people, but they depend on us. They don't cause us, but we depend on them. Together we exist. And this is the way I sit, the way I practice really is. And then many verses follow to go into many, many subtle details about dependable arising, which are wonderful to study. But that's the first one, and it's such a wonderful start. Showing the teaching. Is there anything you'd like to express?

[04:12]

You're welcome to do so. Yes? I guess I can express perplexion. Everything arises codependently, and it's ungraspable. Is there any, where does it start? Not that it probably matters, but is there a first? Yeah, that's a basic question.

[05:23]

Is there a first cause? And in the Buddha Dharma, there's not a primal cause. In other words, there's no cause of dependent core rising. So dependent core rising is beginningless. Beginnings are mental projections that beings that dependently co-arise can imagine. We, for example, are the type of beings who can imagine beginnings. And we do. And then we wonder, does our dependent co-arising have a beginning? And the answer is no. There's no beginning to things. But we don't deny that conventionally our minds construct together a beginning to various things. But in the Buddha Dharma there's not a creator, a prime cause,

[06:34]

And is there not a prime cause or a creator? But even in dependent co-arising, even as we dependently co-arise, there's not something that the dependent co-arising is based on. And the dependent co-arising isn't a basis. So our minds that are a prime mover or a prime cause, Even in the midst of creation, at the moment, we tend to put some primacy into the creation of the moment and imagine there's something substantial about it so that it could be then the basis of something. So in a multi-dimensional, multi-dynamical, ungraspable, pulsating universe, our mind tries to ignore that and make it something we can get a hold of. A beginning would be a way to get a hold of things.

[07:38]

So our mind, it has been created, has arisen, And based on our mind, a world has arisen because our mind is created to be able to imagine some graspability, our mind has contributed to a graspable world. So this is, but there's no, there's nothing to grasp in this process, but we even try to project back onto the process something substantial, like a beginning, an end, or a middle. Is it simple faith in that law? Yeah, simple faith in that law, which means that you would think about it and remember it and also listen to the teachings which help you from making that thing substantial, because it's a law of how things are ungraspable and empty and insubstantial.

[08:45]

It's the law of how things are selfless. It's the law of selflessness. It's the law of life itself. And life is not something you can limit. It's infinite. It's too big to get a hold of and too little to get a hold of. It's beyond all measurement. And it allows all kinds of measurement. So we can go right ahead and measure, but we can't measure life actually we can just make parts of it. But the parts of it do not exist without the whole of it. So the parts of it are not really parts because you can't separate them from the whole which you needed. So the teaching teaches us how to not make the teaching into something But for starters, you just say, okay, that's, I guess everybody agrees in the tradition that that's, this is the central teaching.

[09:57]

And the implications of the central teaching, all which we believe in is a law, but not a law in the sense that things are always this way. Because the kind of law it is, is a law which lets you be the way you are, which has never been before. It's a law which lets you be who you are every moment and doesn't keep you being the person you used to be, which some people would like you to be and some other people would like you not to be. But they don't want you to be this way either. They want you to be that way, and that's where we live. So faith in this will keep you from making this teaching into another beginning and ending thing that you can get a hold of. But we've got to be careful because we have a long-standing habit of ignoring this teaching and making self-projections onto everything. So it's going to be a lot for us to keep catching ourself at projecting things on something that no projection can measure.

[11:10]

Okay? Good luck. Next is, from this morning, is... Speaking of this morning, earlier you mentioned, and I didn't follow you, when you said that we cannot see causation. Yeah. It seems to me that we can't. It seems to you that you can? Seems to me. Yeah. And that's what David Hume is saying, no, no. That's superstition. So people experience temporal sequence or, you know, like X and then it's followed by Y, it's followed by Z. We actually experience that. So there is this, like, this arises and ceases and it's followed by this which arises and ceases. This we can sense. This is the way our sense organs work. This constant actually change. But that's not causation.

[12:15]

That's not actually causation. Causation is a superstition or projection on that. I shouldn't say causation is a projection on it. We make a projection of causation on what we can see. But what we project on it, we can't see. You can't see that A is the cause of B, but you think so, and then you project... ...causation onto the sequence, and the sequence actually is demonstrating causation, but you can't see how. And again, the reason why you can't see how is because no individual can see causation. We can know maybe that's the cause and effect, but we don't know the mechanism of it happening. A person cannot see this. Only a Buddha can see this. And a Buddha is not one person. Practicing together, we come to know that A followed by B is demonstrating causation.

[13:19]

We need to look at A followed by B and think, I see causation. I mean, you say you can see it, but when somebody says that I can't see it, I can say, yeah, actually, I don't see causation. Actually, all I see in my senses, or even my conceptual version of my senses, is A followed by B. I can't There's something else behind the scenes that's actually in charge of this sequence here. So there are causal, there are temporal sequences, but actually the causation is not a temporal sequence. It's just that causation embraces temporal sequence. Causation is a totality. Like we say, you know, like they have stimulus and response and people think, The stimulus is first and the response is second, but the stimulus wouldn't be a stimulus except that it's a stimulus to a response. So really this response comes before the stimulus.

[14:21]

So there is a causal sequence, there is a temporal sequence, but it's a temporal sequence of an event which has two parts, two main parts in the story so far, a stimulus and a response, but they're part of one thing, one event. which is these things mutually arising together. You can't have a response without a stimulus, and you can't have a stimulus without a response, but it's really the stimulus, the response is actually before the stimulus, which is the opposite way that people usually think about it. Because, again, they think that you can... The action of stimulus-response You can know the parts before the whole, but actually you have to know the whole before you can know the parts. You have to have the action before you can know the stimulus and response. And we, neural organisms, have sense organs which are stimulated, but the stimulus is connected with the response.

[15:22]

And the nerve is the mediator. But it's really the action that's important. And so again, we can know causation by ourselves. We know causation. We come to know it through communal activity. And in fact, through communal activity, we do kind of know that there's causation. But I can't, by myself, look and see it, and you can't either. practicing together, we know it. And we're right, there is causation. However, we need to do some work on clarifying our understanding of it, because causation is, again, I can't see it myself, you can't see it yourself, yet we all know it. But the way we know it is not the way we see it. We don't see it in the first place by ourselves. But once we know it, then we put a projection on what we know.

[16:25]

In fact, if you think there's causation, you're right. but your projection on it is not it. Let's see, Shoshana, I think, if you still... Digesting. Do you want to come back? Should I come back to you later, after you digest? I think I can interrupt what my question was. Okay. Is it possible to have, is it possible to conceive or even put to work the kind of like parts, almost, I think we have words as parts, to realize interdependence? Yeah. So, for example, the Buddha, who opened to the knowledge, which he didn't make up by himself, but just sort of was given to him, ...activity of all beings, he got the knowledge of dependent co-arising, which he did not make by himself, but he received this, discovered this, and then he could present it in parts, word by word.

[17:36]

And other disciples, this totality of causation, word by word, some more skillfully than others. depending on how much they participated in this knowledge which didn't come by their own consciousness. But consciousness can be illuminated by a knowledge that consciousness reaches, or a knowledge which all consciousnesses are contributing to. But no consciousness can reach it. But it can illuminate consciousness, this knowledge. So in fact, causation has to some extent illuminated most somewhat. But it can be more thorough, and when it's more thorough, then our consciousness can produce words, little samples, little sensible, graspable information coming from this knowledge.

[18:39]

We teach people how to meditate on our practice together, such that you open to our practice together, you open to our knowledge together, you open to what we all know as a group by our life together. And that's what life is. Life itself is not some but we can dream that it is. So we got to get together and do something which is not just our idea of a thing. What might the experience of the realization of interdependence be like? What might the experience of the realization of interdependence actually look like? Well, it could look like this day. It could look like this day together. It could look like this moment together. It could look just like this.

[19:39]

We know that this is not just the way it looks to you or the way it looks to me. It's the way it looks to you, it's the way it looks to me, it's the way it looks to Leslie, it's the way it looks to you, Ron. But it's not just that either. It's the totality of what we're doing, which is not something in addition to... It's just the wholeness of all of our experience. It's the way all of our experiences hang together. The universe... We need the universe to hang together. And the reason why we need it is because most philosophers hang together. And Buddha is one of them. He does think the universe hangs together. The world of ungraspable, constant change does hang together. And we have our take on that. But we also know that what we're doing here together is not our take on that.

[20:46]

Our take on what's going on individually and each adding all of us up is still not all that's going on here. And we kind of know that. And can we remember it? It's hard. But fortunately, we're helping each other remember. We wouldn't even have heard of this by ourselves. Even if we stayed in our nuclear family, we wouldn't necessarily have heard this. But somehow we've heard this now, and so we're contemplating really letting our body and mind open up to a vast, unlimited, selfless reality. all different kinds of selves with all of their skills and abilities and, you know, and lets them practice together and realize this teaching.

[21:52]

Which, again, can make sense to you that this teaching, when understood, would create fearlessness someplace, would create openness to all beings. It kind of logically follows. Next, I think, was Rose. I wanted to ask you, the teachings of Nagarjuna that you just spoke of... Yeah, that first verse. Is that in the Heart Sutra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness, they do not appear nor disappear? Is that...? The Heart Sutra says all dharmas are marked with emptiness. Okay? Then it says, in emptiness, first of all, it tells you that all dharmas are marked with this emptiness. Then it says, if you look at the emptiness, then in the emptiness, you can't find anything.

[22:57]

So everything has this characteristic of being empty, of selfless. Everything's selfless. Nothing has a self. Nothing has independent existence. That's what it says. Everything has that characteristic. Then when you see that characteristic, then you see you can't find anything. When you look at the characteristic of anything, you realize you can't find anything. When you look at that characteristic of a particular thing, then when you realize that, you realize that nothing can be found. So that way, if you see the emptiness of one thing, you see the emptiness. You can then go down the list. of the things in the universe and find out that they're all empty. But Nagarjuna is now telling you that the way to understand that emptiness is through dependent co-arising. It isn't just that things can't be found, but that the reason they can't be found is because they dependent co-arise.

[24:03]

So he's helping you understand emptiness in such a way that you don't make emptiness nihilistic, which a lot of people, a lot of Western people, when they read emptiness, they think, well, that's nihilism. Well, that's because you're not coming at it through the right door. What I was wondering was, they do not appear nor disappear. It seemed like it was speaking to, you know, there's no beginning, no source, no... Beginning, there's no increase, no decrease, yeah, in emptiness. Okay? But also, if you look at the dependent core arising of beginnings and endings, you realize that they can't be found. So I think... The question, Jimmy's question is, is there a beginning to this, to dependent co-arising? Well, there isn't, but we're supposed to be looking at dependent co-arising.

[25:10]

Dependent co-arising is the most important place to look to see if there's a beginning, because that applies to everything. Yes? what I experience again and again is the falling. So everything you see, everything you say is absolutely stillness and silence and no doubt, no question. But this is all in stillness. And I keep coming out of this stillness and they're losing it. Falling into cause and effect? Yeah. Yeah, okay. So is there a way that... Yeah, I think it would be good to learn in the stillness, without coming out of the stillness, contemplate these teachings.

[26:26]

Say it again? without leaving the stillness, contemplate these teachings. From a still place. And then you can watch to see how they are, which is not falling into what you see and not also not not falling into, but looking at which are the teachings themselves are dependent core risings. So in other words, start meditating on events while you're still. Don't just be still in the blank, but be still and then watch the rising of things and ceasing of things. So first of all, you have to settle with what's happening so you can be still.

[27:28]

So that's part of our practice, to be still and settled, not move. And watch things arise. And then watch to see, do you fall into that? Do you fall towards it? Do you fall away from it? Or do you stay upright and still and not ignore it? And once you see it arising, for you to start to get up and arise too. For you to start moving too. But then it's hard to see what's happening. So then you probably should stop looking at things and calm down again. And I start talking to you here at the beginning of these words. And then they cease. and then they start, and then they cease. They start, they arise, they originate, they dependently arise, and then they dependently cease.

[28:37]

Then they dependently arise. Try to watch them from stillness. Then when you actually get up and start moving, then you can be still and watch your standing and your sitting. But it's hard. When your body starts to stand up, you're going to lose the stillness. So then you're not watching the cause and effect, you're kind of falling into it or away from it. You're avoiding it or indulging in it. So we have to learn to settle here, and then settle, then okay, settled, quiet, still. Now, stillness isn't produced by itself, isn't produced by another, by both, and this stillness is not without a cause. That's the way the stillness is. It's still, it's unmoving, and it has a rising and ceasing.

[29:40]

But what kind of rising and ceasing? Well, it's the kind of rising and ceasing which isn't produced by itself, by another, by both, or no cause. That kind of a rising and ceasing can't be found. That kind of arising and ceasing is emptiness. To be still and then start looking at things arising and ceasing without getting your stillness disturbed. So say, okay, got disturbed, okay, let go, settle down again. But it isn't enough just to settle down and then get up from your settling and then try to contemplate things without being settled. then you feel like, well, I lost the stillness and now I'm just falling into the arising and ceasing, or I'm avoiding it. So we need to be upright and not ignoring the cause and effect, but we have to be still in order to actually be upright and observant rather than leaning into or away.

[30:51]

This is our great challenge to the art of the Buddha Dharma. And together we can learn this. The only way we're going to learn this is by practicing together. Nobody can learn this by herself. The Buddha Shakyamuni did not learn this by herself. She learned it with the Buddha's. So through practicing together, we can learn to meditate on what's going on, and learn how to be still, and then meditate on the arising and ceasing of what's going on, until we practice together, by practicing that way together, until the knowledge of this dharma comes to us, comes to our group practice, and then we individuals can have access to it. but it's really hard.

[31:54]

This is what's called profound teaching. Profound means difficult. Deep means difficult. It means it's not easy to pick up. We have to really be settled and patient and generous in order to let this teaching in and let it ...again until gradually it's, you know, completely permeates our life together. ...teaching that is so sweet. Why is it hard? Because of long history of ignoring it. It's hard because we had this... ...easy for us by habit. It's easy to go with the habit. of ignoring it. So part of the habit is like pulling us away from this and saying, you know, do the usual thing.

[32:55]

You know that that works in a certain way even though it's painful. It's kind of unknown. The shift from I'm practicing to our practice is a big shift. It's not easy. It's unfamiliar. How do I do our practice? Well, I don't do art practice. Well, how does art practice happen? Well, look. But that's the big shift. So it's easy to go the old way, even though it's got a lot of big drawbacks. The new way, even though it's wonderful, is really unfamiliar and we're unfamiliar with how to join a practice which isn't ours. which isn't our own, but is the group's practice. But it's there, we're doing it actually. But it's not easy. And ancestors did not say, they don't say over and over and over, it's easy.

[34:01]

They don't say that all the time. They also don't say, they almost never say it's easy. They sometimes say it's simple, dependent co-arising, for example, a simple statement, but very deep, so it's going to be a lot of work to understand it. But they do quite frequently deep and hard and long, but wonderful. It should be wonderful. If it's not wonderful, we've got to stop here for a second and make it wonderful. But we have to be enthusiastic to do this really hard job. It's a big mountain. but we want to climb it, don't we? Manifest zest. Yeah, right. We must have zest, yes? Yes, go ahead. It's time to stop, so what do you want to say? Just an observation. Go ahead. About our inability to see cause and effect, and it just occurred to me that even by the way we relate to cause and effect, as the cause causes the effect, in and of itself sounds somewhat delusional, so...

[35:19]

I mean, the beginning statement of this talk obviously doesn't agree with that. So the notion of cause and effect in a linear arrangement between them or even any orderly arrangement between them is void of content. They are codependently arise with everything else. Right. But there is temporal sequence involved in one thing. which itself isn't a temporal sequence, but it includes a temporal sequence. We have to accept that. A, then B. B, although it followed A, is what makes AA, and so on. So there's various ways to deconstruct, not to deny temporal sequence, but deconstruct it. They didn't have to. India but we have it now so please take care of it and deconstruct dualism if you have a chance thank you very much for another great day and thanks for taking care of the temple

[36:45]

It's falling apart, but it's becoming more of a jewel every day while it's falling apart.

[36:52]

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