I wrote a character incorrectly on the board. Now it's been corrected. That's the character for... This is the character for silence and stillness and calm. Properly written. If any of the... People who are familiar with Chinese, see me write a character in properly, please feel free to point that out. Here's a letter written to you, to us, the Sangha. Dear Green Gulch Farm, How are you, my friends?

[01:04]

Oh, by the way, this letter is written by the Shika of Sojiji, the person in charge of the guests at Sojiji. How are you, my friends, for having Tojo over to your wonderful Zen Center? Would you please take care of him? I'm sure he is a devoted monk. Time flies. It has been 18 years since I left California. Sorry for not keeping in touch. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere appreciation for all your support and friendship you have kindly extended to me during my stay. I never forget your hospitality. I would like to thank you again for everything you did for me.

[02:09]

Now I am practicing at Sojiji. again as one of the teachers, shika, guest manager, guest master. And I'm also taking care of foreign people's programs. I wish all of you the best good health and practice and continued success and look forward to our paths crossing again. Kensho Miyame. So I also would like to thank you for taking care of each other and taking care of the temple so far during this intensive practice period. The crew heads for looking so carefully after their crews. So may we continue with good health.

[03:12]

Sometimes it's easy, not easy, but sometimes it's less difficult than other times to talk about the great vehicle of the bodhisattvas, the Mahayana. It gets difficult if we think we're comparing it to something, which is hard to avoid. So it's an all-inclusive path. It includes everybody. So that makes some people think, oh, what about paths that don't include everybody? So that's kind of a problem. But anyway, it does include everybody and everything. And I remember... I remember a wonderful scholar writing that the Mahayana, the great vehicle, is a descending of emptiness.

[04:43]

And when I read that, I was kind of surprised to hear that way of talking about it. I guess I would have thought before reading that, that the Mahayana, the great vehicle, is the path of great compassion, which of course it is. But he emphasized the wisdom, which of course it is. And not just any old wisdom, but a deep wisdom, deep prajnaparamita. Emptiness. And understanding emptiness then is understanding of non-duality. Understanding that because of emptiness, samsara, cyclic misery, and peace and freedom of nirvana, they're not different.

[05:59]

Fundamentally, they're ontologically not different in their being. And of course they're not at all different, but also not completely the same, because one is misery and the other is joy and peace. Because of non-duality, bodhisattvas are not afraid of samsara. They're not afraid of misery. they plunge into it to practice compassion. And they can do that even before they, not all bodhisattvas have understood the Mahayana, but all bodhisattvas aspire and practice it.

[07:01]

And, yeah, so... So... It's hard to erase this marker. It's easier to, like, loosen and flip it and use chalk. And then we put it back in again. So the dualistic understanding of our life and our practice is... We're not going to get rid of it.

[08:27]

And the bodhisattva, great compassion, is not trying to get rid of it. However, it's also trying to become free of it and abandon it while it's present, not attached to dualistic views. There's samsara and nirvana. There's also self and other. There's also subject and object. Good and evil? Bad? right and wrong, all these things, they're not really dual, but they are often seen as, you know, not their duality, but dualistic. And so, seeing things dualistically is part of our life.

[09:30]

And the misery that comes from believing in duality that dualistic view is part of our life. And Buddhas accept that it's part of our life and, you know, respond compassionately. So, in a sense, before the Mahayana there was In a sense, among a lot of the Buddha's disciples, there was kind of a dualistic understanding of the practice. And there was, and there still is. Before and after the arising of the deep understanding of emptiness and understanding that everything is non-dual, that all phenomena are non-dual.

[10:31]

Before that wonderful event, there was dualistic understanding and after there was too. But just that after there was also understanding that everything was non-dual. And that scholar which I just mentioned who talked about what the Mahayana was, he also wrote a little article one time, very short, and the name of it was, Scholars Teach the Bodhisattvas. And then he showed some examples of where scholars early bodhisattvas were teaching the bodhisattvas. The scholars who didn't necessarily have the bodhisattva vow, they still knew something about Buddhism and they taught the bodhisattvas who sometimes are not very well educated.

[11:34]

But they have the heart of the Buddha and they will and learn what the scholars are teaching. So that scholar taught that. But he was also a bodhisattva. So, I'll just say this for starters, that again there was, sometimes the tradition is depicted as having three, three Shila is Sanskrit. Samadhi and Prajna.

[12:38]

Ethical discipline, concentration and wisdom. And these were usually taught in sequential order of practice. Based on ethical discipline, we're able to enter into successfully practicing concentration. And with a concentrated body and mind, which also means a flexible mind. soft and open body and mind, undistracted, we're able to practice wisdom. What does self-employing and receiving samadhi mean?

[13:52]

What does self-employing and receiving samadhi mean? Well, self-employing and... Samadhi is... It means an undistracted, focused, open and relaxed kind of awareness of, you could say, self-receiving and employing, or you could also say self-enjoyment. What is that? self-enjoyment in one understanding is that refers to the Buddha, the Buddha's enjoyment of the Buddha's enjoyment of Buddha. So it refers sometimes to sitting under the Bodhi tree enjoying being Buddha. Enjoying the bliss of being fully awake. That's one understanding.

[14:56]

That refers to the Buddha's enjoyment. There's no self there, right? There's no self there. Well, some people would say to you that the Buddha did not teach that there's no self. The Buddha taught that there's... ...independently existing self. But just let me say that that's one understanding of what that self-receiving and employing means is self-enjoyment. It's referring to the way the Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi tree. Another understanding of that term is that it's actually referring simply to Buddha. That you could also, instead of writing self-receiving and employing, you could translate it as Buddha. That it's a way of writing in Chinese, Vairochana.

[16:02]

Vairochana Dharmakaya Buddha. The true body of Buddha. So another understanding is that that samadhi that we... that we... chant about at noon. That's the Buddha Samadhi. It's talking about Buddha's Samadhi, or the ancestor's Samadhi, the Buddha ancestor's Samadhi. Yes? Another way that the word translated as self comes in Indian languages is self, meaning arising by itself with no agent. Yeah. Automatically, spontaneously arising. So to say that something spontaneously arises not depending on anything, yeah. So that's not so much Buddhism, to say that something arises not depending on anything. Just without a cause, without a cause and an effect.

[17:08]

Anyway, it comes out as a kind of non-dualistic term in Indian languages. Maybe it's possible to do that, yeah. But we can come back maybe to the issue of self. But for now I wanted just to point out this order here. And in the first turn wheel of the Dharma, these kinds of teachings were offered, these kinds of practices were offered, without a deep understanding of ultimate truth. And then there came a second turning, which is the perfect wisdom scriptures,

[18:09]

which is more offered to try to help living beings, particularly bodhisattvas, really understand emptiness. And then, if one did thoroughly understand emptiness, then this prajnaparamita would become transcendent prajna. And the samadhi would become samadhi paramita, transcendent samadhi. and the shila, paramita, transcendent, shila, transcendent ethics. And in India, the Mahayana developed to a certain point, but according to what I've heard, it was never the major

[19:27]

it was never the most popular and major form of Buddhism in India. However, when Buddhism was transmitted to Tibet, China, and Korea, and Japan, the Mahayana was the dominant, very much, in a sense, the dominant form of Buddhism. However, even though it was dominant, people didn't understand. Because even though they liked, they loved the bodhisattva vow and the bodhisattva image, but they didn't understand emptiness. It took them a long, it took centuries for the Chinese to understand, and then also the Koreans. And even before Buddhism began, Before Buddhism was transmitted to Japan, the Chinese were working with it for about five centuries.

[20:32]

And it took about four centuries for the Chinese to produce texts, but they finally understood emptiness quite well. They struggled for 400 years to understand it. And some great Chinese teachers... struggled to understand emptiness and were teachers of thousands of and they actually were wise enough to realize that they did not understand emptiness. And one of them prayed that he would go to the Pure Land where he could study with Buddha and understand emptiness. Around the time of the great translator, Kumara Jeeva. Kumara. Yay. He's a person from Central Asia.

[21:37]

Jeeva. Kumara. Kumara. Kumara Jeeva. He was from Central Asia. He got kidnapped by the Chinese and they brought him to China. Made him marry a lot of Chinese ladies so he would learn Chinese. And so then he translated so beautifully, so beautifully, he translated Sanskrit into Chinese. Somehow wound up to be... lovely Chinese that the Chinese just love to read. Other Indian and Central Asian monks came to, monks and nuns came to China and they also translated Sanskrit texts into Chinese, but the translations were Chinese.

[22:41]

He translated His translations became Chinese literature. Like, he translated the Lotus Sutra, and his translation is the one almost everybody, many translations of Lotus Sutra. His is the one that everybody loved best. He translated the Heart Sutra. No, no, Shrenzhan did. He also translated the Heart Sutra, but Shrenzhan's Heart Sutra is the one we chant. And he also translated the Vimalakirti Sutra. Anyway, he was great. He knew the Sanskrit, but somehow his Chinese wound up and he understood emptiness. So starting around that time, the Chinese, and then he has disciples. And some of his disciples also understood Chinese. And then they started a school in China called the Three Treatises. which is the three main Madhyamaka treatises in China, which in Madhyamaka are the people who are elucidating the emptiness teaching of the perfect wisdom sutras.

[23:57]

That's Kumar Jiva. So after that, the other Chinese started to understand emptiness. So now the Chinese, they have the prajna. However, the samadhi and the shila didn't get understood. So they were practicing ethical discipline and concentration and wisdom before. They understood the emptiness teachings, they had the prajnaparamita, but they continued to practice the dualistic concentration, samadhi, and dualistic ethical discipline for a long time after they started to understand emptiness.

[25:09]

Yes? Can you describe the difference between dualistic samadhi and non-dualistic samadhi? Well, as a matter of fact, I can. Well, dualistic samadhi is kind of like this is concentration and this is distraction. Okay? And I think they're different. And I hate distraction. And I love concentration. And right here in this Zen Center, over in that Zen Do, there used to be people sitting in there who hated distraction. And some of them hated distraction, but also occasionally they weren't distracted and they loved it. And they attached to it. And then they got really upset when they lost it. And then they hated losing it. Anyway, that happened right here.

[26:15]

Right here. But the Zen school comes after Kumarajiva. Bodhidharma is after him. And the Zen school is the school which started finally after about in like the 7th century. Start to see signs in the Zen school that they understand emptiness and they apply it to their Samadhi practice. And then, and even before the Zen school, there was another school, Tiantai. The Tien Tai school, Tien Tai is from, because the school was centered on a mountain called Tien Tai Shan. And the founder of this school, his name is Jiri, an incredibly brilliant practitioner and meditator.

[27:34]

And his teacher was even a greater meditator, but not such a great. So, Jiri made, he wrote a huge text where he explained how to see concentration in terms of emptiness. And he said stuff like, Not just him, also Kumarajiva translated Nagarjuna texts, or actually he wrote them and attributed them to Nagarjuna. And he also described this non-dualistic way of doing meditation. A bodhisattva, when a bodhisattva looks at everything, Whether concentrated or distracted, they see no duality.

[28:46]

Bodhisattvas are sometimes concentrated and sometimes they're not. And sometimes they are concentrated. Sometimes they're not concentrated. Sometimes they see other people are concentrated. And sometimes they see other people are distracted. But they see no duality. Yeah, if they are distracted, they don't see a duality between them distracted and them concentrated. And then it says, this is the part we have to be careful of, you know, when it comes. Non-understanders of emptiness... in the midst of distraction and concentration, have feelings of ill will towards distraction.

[30:04]

And they have ill will and all the other problems that come from seeing, believing that distraction is really separate from concentration. And also, when concentration comes up, they get really attached to it. And then we have lots of suffering among people who are trying to practice meditation. So what I was talking to you about on Sunday was delusion and enlightenment are dancing together and they meet at the self. They meet at self. So when all things come forward, and then in that coming forward of all things, a self appears, that's awakening.

[31:10]

When the self is held onto and applied to everything, that's delusion. However, they both are pivoting towards the word self. And then, like somebody said in question and answer, There's no end to this me doing things, right? But there's also no end to things doing me. They work together. They interpenetrate each other. There is perfect awakening in the midst of delusion. So we can practice in the midst of intense balls delusion. we can practice samadhi in the midst of distraction and not hate distraction. And so the Tiantai school made this clear.

[32:19]

Jiri lived 536 to 597. In 61 years, he did a lot. He started the Mahayanizing, the concentration practice, and teaching people how to see concentration non-dualistically. And then the Zen school and the Pure Land school followed after the Tendai school, and they didn't really, I mean, they didn't, like, in a sense, deepen the teaching about the non-duality of the Samadhi. But they thought of all kinds of creative ways to practice it.

[33:25]

And they were so creative in their practice that the Tendai people mostly were very attracted to Zen, or Chan, and Pure Land. After a while, the Tendai left, and all of monastic Buddhism was Chan, or Zen. And the people, the non-monastic people, were mostly Pure Land. And they practiced bodhisattva, non-dual concentration practices. However, not however, and on top of that, the next thing I wanted to talk to you about was that the Mahayana understanding of the precepts, it took a long time for the Chinese to get that. Matter of fact, the first place in history where there seems to be a Mahayana emptiness

[34:32]

non-dual understanding of the precepts, occurs in Japan around 1900. And it's put forth by a person named Saicho. S-H-I-C-H-O. He's also called Dengo Daishi. Before you're moving to Shila, I'm wondering if you would want to teach me about how to practice the Samadhi. Because you said that that's the... Before I go deeply into the Shila, I will be happy to talk to you more about the Samadhi. But I just want to point out that there's the prajna, there's the prajna, the wisdom teachings of the perfect wisdom of emptiness.

[35:45]

Then there's the samadhi of perfect wisdom emptiness. And then there's the ethical discipline of perfect wisdom non-dual, Mahayana. And that The usual order of doing these practices is, again, ethical discipline, samadhi, ethical discipline, concentration, wisdom. However, the way that the Mahayana transformation of those practices was historically reversed. that these teachings went to China, took them 400 years to make their understanding Mahayana. It took another, well not so long, another 200, so went from Kumar Jiva to here, another about 200 to get the concentration practice, the meditation practice to be Mahayana, and then another about 200 for East Asia to the ethic practice.

[37:02]

And I don't know if during this intensive we'll be able to get even to the ethics, but I just want to tell you beforehand that there's this thing called Zen precepts, Zen Kai. they're dealing with the Mahayana understanding of the precepts. And that's what I've been working on for a couple of decades. And as you know about... She was married to Linda. He and I worked together to translate a text called Essence of Zen Precepts, which is... about these bodhisattva precepts. And as I mentioned in Being Upright, I asked Kadagiri Rishi, well, is there any Zen texts about the bodhisattva precepts? And he said, yeah, there are some.

[38:08]

However, when you read them, they don't even look like what you might think precepts are. And that's, I would say now, the reason why they don't look like precepts is because we've thought so much according to our dualistic understanding of the precepts. And so when we see precepts presented in a non-dual way, they don't necessarily look like precepts. Like, you know, they say in Japan, they say that when people in the mountains see fresh fish, they think they're rotten. It takes people a while to get that one. Almost none of you have gotten it yet. Except those who have gotten it a long time ago and have forgotten. The people in the mountain never see fresh fish. So when they see it, they think there's something wrong with them. Like their eyes are like shiny and they look, you know, like maybe they're children.

[39:13]

When people see Mahayana precepts that are used to the dualistic precepts, they don't look like precepts. They're not even fresh fish, they're living fish. They're really like it. And living fish, you know, are dangerous. So Mahayana is kind of dangerous because it's so alive. They're kind of dangerous. And so anyway, I don't know if we'll get to that during the intensive, but we will get to this. Yes. We will get to looking at the Mahayana version of concentration practice. Yes. I vow to end all evil. I vow to cultivate all good. I'm dualistic. Actually, it does seem kind of dualistic, yeah. So, but, you know, when you move from the early teachings, because I, you know, refraining from all evil, doing all good, purifying the mind, that's a very ancient teaching in Buddhism, right?

[40:29]

From the Dharmapada. So, when the Mahayana comes along, it doesn't throw those teachings out the window. It keeps saying them. ...new understanding. So we don't throw away the Buddha's early teaching, we just have a new understanding of it. We still have the Srila Samadhi Prajna, but now it becomes Srila Paramita. and dhyana, which is similar to samadhi, dhyana paramita. We don't throw out the old. We bring in the new and then we demonstrate that the new is there before it goes away. That the new and the old live together. The old thought the new and the old didn't live together. the old thought evil and good did not live together.

[41:33]

I mean, the Buddha didn't fall for that, but when the Buddha said avoid evil, avoid evil means that in evil there's no good. They didn't understand in the early days, in the early thousand years, the early 1500 years, they didn't understand that right in evil is good, and right in good is evil. They didn't understand that. But that doesn't mean we stop saying, avoid evil. There's a fascicle by Dogen called, Avoid Evil. And you read in there, you find out what he understands avoid evil means. So now, start to look at what the non-dual understanding of avoid evil is. what the non-dual understanding of evil is. So this wonderful teacher, Jiri... So this sounds like I'm talking about... But it's really something to concentrate on, is that when we're in evil, we can practice right in the middle of evil.

[42:53]

The Buddha way is... living in the middle of evil. Of course, it's good. The good, good, good of all goods is in the middle of medium, below average, and above average evil. And being mindful of that and being focused on that becomes a mahatma. Meditation, being focused, that sounds like a teaching about ethics, and it is, but focusing on that teaching of ethics, the teaching that the Buddha way can live in the middle of any evil situation. You don't have to go to like a less evil situation, and you don't have to go to a more evil place to practice. wherever situation you are, if there's any evil around, it is possible to practice the Buddha way.

[43:53]

And that's the Mahayana by teaching us how that's possible. Pardon? Can you give us an example? A real life example of how that works? Oh, a real life example? Well, there's so many, I just... So, Gandhi was coming up to some prayer meeting. I think he was doing his morning prayers with a bunch of people. And I picture him coming, like walking uphill slightly. I don't know. I don't know if this was photographed or filmed.

[44:56]

But anyway, he's coming away from a prayer meeting where he's and I think his prayer might have been Om Ram. So this is not strictly speaking Buddhism, but anyway, I think he's praying for world peace or something or freedom among oppressed people or something. He was an oppressed group. You know? The Indians weren't oppressed by the British. I heard that they were. If the Indians weren't oppressed, excuse me, but I thought he was like working for, to free people from colonial oppression. Projects. But he also, that was also his way of trying to like practice compassion, right? So I think he's trying to, he's meditating on compassion, which, again, strictly speaking, some might say, well, that's not Buddhism.

[45:58]

But anyway, it's in my mind. He's practicing compassion. He's actually, he's not giving a speech. He's just doing his compassion practice. I picture him doing that. I don't know if that's what's going on. And then somebody comes up to him and shoots him. But after being shot, he continues his practice. In the middle of this kind of evil of somebody murdering him, the practice is going on. Some people consider illness evil. There's like people being mean to each other. But there's also the evil of disease some people feel. So the historical Buddha, towards the end of his life, but also earlier in his life, but I'll talk about the end, he was like dealing with the evil of a fatal illness.

[47:09]

But he was turning the old Buddha, the Dharma wheel. He was happily teaching people right while he was like a deadly disease. The Buddha way went on even though the Buddha way was surrounded by life-threatening illness. And he also said to people, somebody gave him some food which seemed to be related to this illness. He also told people, don't punish that guy for giving me that food. So he was protecting beings while he was being assailed. And then, of course, we have the stories of quite a few other disciples of Buddha who were by various assailants. And they responded to the assailants with compassion. So the Buddha way, when a person who is practicing the Buddha way is surrounded by attacks, insults, and so on and so forth, they continue to practice.

[48:24]

They can. And when they do, people go, wow, that's impressive. I mean, I know how to fight back, but how do you, like, say thank you and teach people compassion when you... I don't quite know how to do that, but it looks like it might be possible to learn it. And I told you the story before about the Zen monk who was falsely accused, right? And he responded to the insults and injustice on him with, oh, okay, I see what's going on here. Fine, I'll deal with this. You take care of the situation. Okay. And then later they come and praise him. And the praise, I'm not saying it's evil, but anyway, he practices the Buddha way with that too. It's a way that can be practiced. It's a way that is right now permeating all situations, and we have a chance to learn how to be there with that.

[49:33]

But we have to practice in order to realize this all-pervading Buddha way. But we're also being told in any situation, it's there. And if you remember the practice, it's there. Even if you say, well, I can't do it. You're still thinking about it. You're considering it. And you're saying, it's too hard for me. Well, that's how it's there at that time. Or even to blow yourself away when people treat me like that. I don't want to be kind when they treat me like that. Well, that's the way you're doing it. That's the way you're practicing compassion. You're saying, it's too much. I can't do it now. This person doesn't deserve it. That's the way you're practicing it. You can say, well, that's not very developed. Okay, but that's the way you're doing it. So, yeah, so this jury guy is saying, kind of like, no matter how you're practicing, that's how you're practicing the bodhisattva way. Nobody's not doing it, but people do it in anti-Bodhisattva way.

[50:37]

The way they do it is, I don't want to be a Bodhisattva. They're stupid, and I'm not going to be compassionate to those jerks. That's the way you're practicing compassion. Great. There's more. And various traditions show examples of that. In the Jews, in the Christians, in the Hindus, in the Muslims, in Islam. The Buddha way pervades all the other religions. And all the other religions pervade Buddhism. Buddhism includes all religions. None are excluded. And none can stop Buddhism from pervading.

[51:39]

And if they don't agree with that, we pervade them not agreeing with that. We, the Buddha way people. We're not better than them. We're included in them. And they're not better than us. We're included in them. This is Mahayana. Concentrating on this, everything I said today, everything I said today, focusing on that is Mahayana meditation. There's nothing that isn't. my question. Compassion is your question? Yeah, like, I mean, as I understand it, my mechanism for achieving a greater capacity to be in non-dual places has to do with my ability to be compassionate to all things. And maybe I'm wrong about I wonder where compassion is on this.

[52:43]

Where is compassion? Well, this is just, this Sheila is a major, basically Sheila is compassion. And I mean, in some sense you could say compassion is Sheila. Madi is compassion. And also Dana, generosity is compassion. And in Southeast Asia, and I think in East Asia too, they start by teaching his Sheila by teaching them actually Donna. They start by generosity, which is the usual thing to start with. This presentation doesn't mention generosity, but in the bodhisattva tradition we have the six perfections. And the six perfections start with the compassion practice of dana, of generosity.

[53:46]

And generosity is non-dual with wisdom. But we start with generosity, usually. Generosity is the way we begin to transform our consciousness on the bodhisattva path. After it's already been maybe transformed into having the bodhisattva vow, then when we start to practice, we start with generosity, and then we do ethics, sila, Kshanti, and then we do enthusiasm, virya, and then we do jhana or samadhi. And you said some other things which, by the way, were good. I don't know if you can remember what they were. Do you remember what they were? What were they? Compassion is the way to grow capacity to be present and awake with non-duality.

[54:51]

Yeah, right. Compassion is the way to become, did you say ready? Compassion develops the capacity to be with non-duality. To stay still, to not get triggered. No, no, no, get off there. You don't stay still with compassion. You realize. And in this way, you can be with the non-duality which is already here. Non-duality, of course, cannot be someplace else. But non-duality also does not eliminate someplace else. But it doesn't have to go someplace else to be someplace else. It's already got someplace else. I think Alejandro was next. I was just wondering, what was Bodhidharma's contribution to non-dual samadhi or any of the non-dual modes of practice?

[56:01]

Did you say where does Bodhidharma fit in? Yeah, what was his contribution? What was his contribution? Oh, he brought the non-dual mind. That's my story about him. He brought the Buddha mind seal. The Buddha mind seal. One meaning of seal is circle. A circle can be seen as a metaphor for non-duality. Another meaning of... It's a character for mudra. It's a circle. It's a ring. But it's also like a seal. so he brought the buddha mind the way the buddha mind seals and interpenetrates with everything so he brought that teaching and then he demonstrated it in the stories that he left demonstrate this non-dual practice however those stories The Chinese weren't ready for that until about the time that he supposedly lived, because he lived after Kumarajiva, and he supposedly lived as a contemporary of Jiri.

[57:12]

But he didn't write vast treatises explaining about the non-dual Mahayana meditation. He just said a few things which epitomize that. summarize this teaching. But that's what he was transmitting to, the Buddha Mind Seal. That's what we're talking about here. And the Buddha Mind Seal does not avoid using skillful devices, provisional teachings, for people who are not yet ready for the non-dual meditation. He teaches them teachings which they which aren't really dual, but which their dualistic mind can say, okay, I'll do that. Non-dual practice, they're maybe not interested or even frightened of it. And then he offers them the dualistic teaching and they say, that's for me.

[58:15]

Or he offers them the same teaching, but in a way that is for them. which allows their dualistic mind to get a hold of it. Bodhidharma, again, we don't know, we have no historical evidence really for Bodhidharma. There's a cave in northern China which they say, this is the cave where Bodhidharma lived. But there's no way Bodhidharma lived in that cave. They just, they realized that this is a world famous person, so they should make a cave for it. and put his name over the door. People go there, people who love Bodhidharma go there to the cave. But we don't really know if there was a Bodhidharma. But that doesn't tell us any stories about him. And one of the stories we have about him is that he's a man. Another story we have about him is that he is Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva. That's one of the stories we have about him. So here's the story.

[59:19]

He went to see an emperor. Somehow he got an audience with an emperor. Wu of the Liang Dynasty, which is in the southern part of China. His teacher said, don't hang out with emperors. But anyway, he did. He got an interview, and the emperor was a big, there was an emperor Wu. There is historical evidence that there was an emperor Wu. There's no evidence, the Chinese have no real evidence that Bodhidharma met him. But Zen people, we have a story about him meeting this emperor Wu. who was a big and he also studied Buddhism himself. And some of his friends, there's also historical evidence for it. One of his friends is named Mahasattva Fu. Congratulations. Mahasattva Fu was, can I just briefly mention about him?

[60:22]

he had the practice of selling his family to raise money to buy food for poor people, starving people. And then after he would sell his family, before they actually moved out of his house, people would give him money to buy his family. And I don't know if he said, could I sell you again today? And then they said, OK, go ahead. But anyway, he repeatedly sold his money to raise funds for the poor. But he always got the grants to buy them back. So that's the kind of people that the emperor hung out with, and there's historical evidence for that. So Bodhidharma semi-legendarily goes and meets the emperor, and the emperor... tells him all the stuff he did, and then he says to Bodhidharma, which merit did I get for this? And Bodhidharma said, no merit.

[61:24]

This is the beginning of the Buddha mind seal. There's no merit. Right in the middle of everything you did, there's no merit. And then he says, okay, what's the highest meaning of the holy truth? So the highest meaning of holy truth is no holy. Right in the middle of holy is no holy. So Bodhidharma taught him emptiness. The name of that, the name of, I think the name, yeah, the name of this case is emptiness. The emperor says, what's the highest meaning of holy truth? And Bodhidharma says, no holy. And then the emperor says, Oh no, he says, vast emptiness, no holy. So he transmits this emptiness samadhi to the emperor. And then after he does that, the emperor says, well, who are you?

[62:30]

And Bodhidharma says, don't know. And then he leaves. So Bodhidharma did not offer the provision to the emperor, and the emperor didn't go for it. He did not offer anything the emperor's dualistic mind could get a hold of. And he didn't want anything to do with it at that moment. Then after he left, the court Buddhist teacher said to the emperor, do you know who that was? That guy that just left and the emperor said, no, who? He said, that was... the great being, the bodhisattva, Avalokiteshvara. The neighbor says, oh, let's call him back. Sometimes Avalokiteshvara teaches in a way that the dualistic mind can say, yes, that's for me, and then it goes to work on that. Sometimes the bodhisattva teaches in a way that the dualistic mind just gets too frustrated, not ready for it, and says, no, thank you.

[63:42]

But in that story, I think he was teaching that. And he generally specialized in that and didn't do much provisional teaching. So the founding personage in the Zen tradition pretty much in his teachings with giving no quarter, giving no leaning away from just the ultimate truth. That's kind of the founding thing about seeing Zen as the emptiness school. But Zen is also a practice school. But it's a non-dual practice. However, the school offers provisionally, it offers practices which dualistic minds can feast on. So we also have this expression in the Zen tradition of Officially, you can't get a needle in.

[64:48]

It's just ultimate truth. That's all there is. But unofficially, you can get a four-horse carriage in. we're not afraid of offering teachings which can be taken dualistically, and sometimes we feel like it's time to offer a teaching which the dualistic mind can't deal with and won't even listen to right now, but maybe later. Your example of Gandhi, I don't think that was such a great example, because Gandhi was You're welcome here too. I trusted you. So Gandhi in that story is a great, wise person, and the other guy is the evil person. So Gandhi continues to practice compassion. But what if I am the killer? How do I practice with that?

[65:50]

You contemplate the killer. So, again, Jiri says, if we were like, sort of like, again, totally surrounded by, you know, greedy thoughts and hateful thoughts, you know, just, you know, and they're increasing by leaps and bounds. If they were in that situation, then he says, you can look in any, you can do the contemplation, the non-dual meditation, you can look at anything because you're completely surrounded by evil. So wherever you look, you're doing the practice. But the way you're doing it is you're looking at anti-Buddhism. That's your practice, is to look at that. Inside myself, yeah. And the Buddha wakes up in the middle of all that, of her own stuff. And when you're completely surrounded, you don't have to decide what to look at.

[66:52]

Whatever direction you look, it's evil. And so, okay, okay. I'm like totally distracted because everything I look at is, since I'm nothing but evil, all I've got to do is look in any direction and I'll be meditating on what I should be meditating on. Now, of course, how should you meditate on that? You should meditate compassionately. Well, how can I meditate compassionately when I'm surrounded by hatred? That's right. How can you? But it is the Buddha way does do that in the middle of that. That's what the Buddha way is. But it's not functioning someplace where there's no evil. Evil is in the face of the good of Buddha all the time. Yes? Does the non-dual versus dual with the precepts correspond to the relative as the dual and the absolute as non-dual?

[68:01]

The absolute as non-dual? No. The absolute is more like not dual or no duality. The absolute rejects duality. Non-dual is the non-duality between no duality and duality. It's really more the interpenetration of duality and not duality. Yeah, so we have, we do have, it says what's the highest truth? We do have a highest truth. We kind of agreed on what's the highest truth. Emptiness is the highest truth.

[69:11]

And then there's conventional truth. It's the lowest truth. There's just a higher and a lower. And the lower is actually also lowest. The higher is highest and the lower is lowest. The highest and lowest are inseparable. And that's one rendition of the two truths of the Indian Buddhism. In China, a funny thing happened, partly because of where they said, and it's not just because of him, it's because of Chinese culture. Chinese can see this is higher than this. But what they like even better than this higher than this is something in the middle. The middle between higher and this is more the point than the higher. Even though the higher really is totally cool and up there, way up there, it's still so high. But better than higher and lower

[70:12]

is the middle, and also then one step further is the interpenetrate. So we have our daily channel. Right in light, there's darkness. Right in darkness, there's light. And you can say, light's better than dark. Okay, fine. Somebody said, no, no, dark's better than light. Okay, fine. But right in the dark is the light, and right in the light is the dark. And then it's Right? In the darkness, the spiritual light is shining. It's shining in the darkness. And the branching streams of light are flowing in the darkness. The darkness and the light are flowing, are trading each other. That's the teaching of our Zen ancestors. And then it says, it's like snow in a silver bowl. Or a heron in the moonlight. Talking about

[71:13]

highest and conventional and higher truth. They're right together and they're different and yet they are. When you array them, they're not the same. When you mix them, you know where they are. So this is meditation on these two truths. And that interrelationship is praised, is coming from and then the Zen people are writing all these nice poems. He didn't write so many. The Zen people write all the poems. Because even though he wrote a lot, still, you know, people get sick of it over and over. With poetry, the Zen people got people to listen to it and let it sink into our body. Like, what is it? the unique breeze of reality. Can you see it? Creation working her loom and shuttle, incorporating the patterns of spring into the ancient brocade.

[72:18]

The loom and the shuttle. Ultimate truth and conventional truth. The loom, upright, always steady. in the shuttle, working in all these ways, making the brocade from ancient times of our life. Yeah, they're working. This is a poetic expression of this teaching from Jiri. Yes. Yes. teaching the Mahayana came out of emerged from like everyone was swimming in the dualistic teachings in the first place like when the Mahayana emerged like everybody most people seemed like knew about it or believed it or something to it but it seemed like for us most of us I don't think grew up like swimming in that water like we didn't we didn't grow up knowing what those things are or believing them especially maybe some other version of something but my question is like is it really

[73:39]

It does seem to be necessary. It does seem to be, yeah. So right now I'm working on a book which tentatively I call Realizing Our Original Home. And the model, sort of the story from the Lotus Sutra about this son who wanders away from home for a long time and he's wandering away from his home because he doesn't understand his home. And so we all kind of wander away from our home because we don't understand it. Our home is, what's our home?

[74:43]

Our home is the way we're living in non-duality. Our home is non-duality. Our Buddha nature is how the perfectly pure lives in association with the impure. That's the way we are. And that's imperfect. It's our home. But we don't understand it, so we go wandering. But we want to understand, so we go wandering. We try various things. And the longer we wander, the more destitute we become. So then he... wanders back and finds his original home and his father, but he doesn't have the practice to tolerate non-duality, so his father gives him a job of shoveling dung. And so that's part of the model of this book, is that the first part of Zen practice is shoveling dung. But as you shovel dung, you get more confidence and you feel like, And you actually could face your father, your family. The beauty of non-duality, you develop the capacity for it and then you start practicing with it.

[75:48]

So that's what I'm trying to talk about and bring up the non-dual teachings. But in order to practice them we have to shovel the dung of gain and loss and all that, of This is the way to the precepts. This is not the way to the precepts. And then noticing, I'm kind of attached to doing the right way. And I'm kind of attached to that they're doing them the wrong way. That's part of Zen practice. They're hitting the bells wrong. I'm hitting them right. I'm better than the bad bell ringers. This happens at Zen. But you have to work through that stuff in order to have the capacity to tolerate that you really are in a family that has nothing to gain. And if anything is to be lost, you're okay with that. Because this family is... totally includes gain and loss without being attached to it. But that's too brilliant at the beginning. So Zen students start by trying to get something and hating distraction and loving concentration.

[76:54]

That's part of the dung shoveling, yeah. So in terms of ethics and But also when people start studying, they get attached, we get attached to our idea of the wisdom teachings too. And we tell the teachers that they don't understand very well. And then they maybe have trouble accepting our feedback. And that's part of the process. For all these levels, we start by applying. It's also, Buddhism gives us something to use our greedy, grasping mind on. But then Buddhism says, we gave it to you. That's not what I meant. Wait a minute, I just spent all the time learning that. Well, that's not what I meant, sorry. But we won't let other people take it. because they didn't give it to us.

[77:57]

So Buddhism gives us something, but then it pulls the rug. And we kind of accept that. Well, since you gave it to me, maybe you can take it back. You know, like one time I was talking to Suzuki Roshi, he said, I want you to go to Japan in maybe not more than a month. So I said, okay. And I went over to the Japan consulate and got three months for, you know, sponsorship so I could stay longer than tourist visa. And I brought him back and gave him these applications for a special visa. And he looked at it and said, what is this? And I said, it's an application for a longer visa in Japan. And he said, oh. And he walked away with it. I think more about going to Japan. But I accepted that. I didn't say, hey, what are you doing with my application? He's the one who gave me the whole idea. I was just doing it because he said it, so he can take it away. And so, but then him giving me back was a great teaching for me, which was, you know, what do you call it?

[79:06]

We call it, in Minnesota, we call it Captain May I. In other parts of the country, it's called Mother May I. So Mother says, you can take two steps forward, and then you take two steps forward, and then you say ten steps backwards. After mother says, you can take two steps forward, you're supposed to say, mother, may I? But I didn't say, you don't want me to go to the consulate? I didn't say that. I just went. So he could, you didn't understand what I was saying to you. So I just take this now off the table, as they say. So giving people something to grasp on is a great opportunity for learning and teaching. So we do get that. If you give them something they can grasp onto and they don't, well, then you kind of like tell, then you take the person and hide them from you. Because you don't want them to see that somebody has come and they already are not attached. They're already free.

[80:07]

But most people give them some nice teaching, they grab it. Okay, now, can I have it back, please? Nope. Teach people how to bow or teach people how to walk. Teach people how to chant and then take it back. No. Yes? Never mind. He gave it and he took it back. Oh, wait a second. You have to kill it? You think you have to kill it. Yeah, you think that. If you really know what is good and what is really evil, at the same time with all that, if all good is in all evil and all evil is in all good, then they're kind of the same thing, right?

[81:17]

I don't think they're the same thing. I think the good lives in the middle of that question. But the good isn't the things you just brought up. It's living in that situation. You've got a horse who is in agony, perhaps. We don't know for sure. It doesn't speak English. It's hard for us to say, do you want us to shoot you? So if I see a horse like that, I don't know that the best thing to do is to shoot him. I didn't grow up on a ranch, mission from the ranchers, such that I feel I know that the thing to do is to shoot the horse. So in that situation, I really wouldn't know what to do. And I might just stand there, not knowing what to do, and shoot the horse, because that's what they think is right.

[82:24]

And I'm not saying they're wrong, because I don't know that they're wrong. But I did, in one occasion, I did assist somebody. I stood by somebody while he killed a deer. And I just felt like, I'm not going to do that again. If I find an injured deer who seems to be trembling in pain, I'm not going to necessarily cooperate with killing it. But I'm also not going to kill the person who's trying to kill it. I'm not going to do that. That means I know what the right thing to do is. The right thing to do is not something I know. It's the way things really are. And that's what I want to realize. I would... No, I don't know what I would do.

[83:30]

But I would let things be. Yes, I would let things be. That's my vow, to let things be. And I make that vow because I feel like it's where I will understand what reality is. And understanding reality, then all my actions will be in accord with it. That's what I want to do. But I don't know if I would I don't know if I would never kill an animal. If the animal turned to me and said in English, would you please kill me, I might say, what do you mean? I don't know what I would do. If a person says to me, please kill me, I don't know what I would do. People have tried to commit suicide in my presence, but I felt like they were telling me, would you please stop me? I thought, interfere, why are you doing it in front of me? And people have also talked to me about abortions and things like that. I'm not telling people what to do. I'm not telling, for example, you what to do.

[84:34]

I'm not telling you to kill horses or not kill horses. I'm into having a conversation with you. And I'm trusting the conversation more than what you think is right or what you think is wrong or what I think is right. I'm trusting conversation. And conversations are actions. The conversation knows better than either party in the conversation. Maybe you have a really wise person, you know, everybody knows this is a wise person, and a really immature child. To me, it's not that they know the way more than the other person. The conversation between them knows the way. And this conversation comes up with the appropriate response to the situation. Which might be, I don't know what it would be, it could possibly be to, as they say, put the dog down.

[85:38]

It could be that. Somebody did telephone a veterinarian. The veterinarian did come. The dog was suffering. I was right there with the dog. And the veterinarian said, first I give it a sedative. And the veterinarian said, it's possible that with this sedative, she'll let go. We gave the sedative, but she didn't let go right away. And I was willing to just sit with, I was willing to sit with the dog under sedation. She wasn't like writhing with agony anymore. She was calm. I was willing to sit there with the dog. But the veterinarian's not going to sit there with the dog.

[86:44]

The veterinarian's got other people to go see. So the veterinarian's willing to sit there with the sedative for a while, but then there's another shot that can be given after that. But they're not going to wait around very long for the sedative. But I would be willing to, and then I would be willing to call the veterinarian and come back again if people want it. But people didn't want to wait around. So they decided to give the second shot. And I accepted the people, the veterinarian, because the people, excuse me, but they could have given sedatives to the people too. And then they would have been willing to wait. But I think the dog, the sweet little dog, would have died. If we just waited a little longer, but the people were suffering so much or had such a busy schedule that I was the only one who was sort of available to stay and people didn't want to like, they wanted to get on with their, either get free of their misery or get on with their job.

[87:59]

It was administered and it was beautifully agonizing. and quick. And then she was just so beautiful lying there dead. And I don't think that the people who decided to give the shot were wrong. But if I was in there, if it was me and the veterinarian, I would have told the veterinarian, you can leave and I'll call you back later if I feel like I want that second shot. But it wasn't just me. It was me and some humans who couldn't stand another night of dog misery. So they decided for the second shot. But I don't know. I didn't make the decision, but I supported it. All in all, that was what happened, and it was, yeah, it was kind of, the whole thing was quite beautiful, and there didn't seem like there were any good and evil people there.

[89:13]

Everybody was struggling together. It was pretty good. But again, it would have been different. And if I'm out in the woods with an injured animal, just me, things go one way. But if I'm with a bunch of other people, then I have to take care of them, and it's a different story. And things might go differently than they would go if it was me alone. But it doesn't mean, like, a good thing, what I would do and what... Because I'm a different person when other people express their feelings. But I don't really know. I really don't know. Yes? These situations are kind of dramatic, like when they... potential death or suffering. And I'm wondering... If you are approaching almost everything with a let it be, don't jump in, don't assume I know frame, I guess I'm asking you, where, what happens then, what might happen that would have you actually intervene in a situation?

[90:30]

Well, if I let things be, then the next moment something happens. I just let it be for now. I start... This is what's happening. I let it be. And then an action will come. By you or it? By me and it and everything. The actions will arise. And then we practice ethics with those actions. When those actions arise and we look at them... and respectful? Are we being honest? Are we intoxicated? Are we putting ourselves above other people? Do we think we know better than them? So first of all you let things be, generosity. Then you practice ethics. Because there are going to be actions. like judgments, I know better than you, you know better than me, you're wrong, you're evil, all that, those thoughts are going to, when you let things be, it doesn't mean that thoughts of good and evil are not going to arise, and thoughts of actions, so letting things be just means we have generosity here.

[91:37]

Now we have ethics. There is an action. If you let it, if you don't do it, if you don't move, that's an action. If you do move, I mean if you voluntarily do not move, or you voluntarily move. So action does arise. We do do karmic actions. We do have intentions. They are omnipresent. Self-acting on the world will arise. So there's letting things be, and then there's self-acting on the world. Delusion, now we've got delusion. And we're letting delusion be delusion. And now we're going to be careful with delusion and respect delusion. And we're going to be patient with delusion. And generosity is an action. Being careful and tender and respectful is action. Being patient is an action. Being concentration is an action. And being wise and being enthusiastic, these are actions that are applied no matter what the self world, no matter what the world is the self's acting on, these six practices are actions that accompany the drama.

[92:49]

So I want to, again, like surfing, when you surf, the board and the water and the body, they're rising and going up and down and all around, right? But you start by letting things be. You let the board be there, you let the weight be there, you let the feet be there, and then you be careful. And then you be patient, because it's painful and difficult and scary. And then you, you know, so you do all these practices, dynamic situation where there's lots of actions going on. These practices accompany the me doing things, the karma. So the karma is going on, and then we bring the practices to the karma so that the karma will be not just wholesome, but liberating. Those practices are not squashing down actions. These practices are riding the action.

[93:52]

These practices are not squashing down the delusion of me massaging the world. They're guiding me massaging the world. To realize the world's massaging me. The world's massaging the world. I'm massaging the surfboard. My surfboard's massaging the ocean. The ocean and the surfboard are massaging me. So now we've got the meeting. And now we have the possibility of realizing these two are working together. And this is going on in the middle of all this turbulence all the time. These practices, we don't realize that that dynamic interaction between delusion and enlightenment that's always going on. But even though we don't realize it, it's still going on. It's waiting there patiently for us to realize it.

[94:58]

It's calling to us. Calling to us to say, please realize me. I think it's kind of getting time to stop, but I'll call in one more person named Alex. I guess you have been talking a lot about the concentration parameter or samadhi parameter. Yeah, I've been pretty focused, haven't I? I've been focusing on what I've been talking about. So in that sense, I've been practicing the same concentration. But I've been practicing it with everything, right? I'm not just following my breath. That's a Mahayana meditation. You should do it with everything. So I think for me, the first thing would be to practice that concentration on dullness.

[96:08]

That's very hard to practice of being alert with dullness. However, there is, right in the middle of dullness, there is alertness. But you're right, we often have a difficulty finding alertness in the middle of dullness. But there are stories of people who found alertness right in the middle, right in the pit of dullness, because it's there. waiting to be discovered. The middle of the dark dullness is light. But if you look for it, you'll miss it. You'll get more tired if you look for the light in the dullness. Like it says, right in light there's darkness, but don't take it as darkness. Right in light there's light, but don't look for it. So you hear the teaching, but then you have to sort of like not leaning into one another, because then you miss it.

[97:11]

You don't have to go someplace to find the Dharma. So right now when I'm in, I probably should go over to a more alert area to study. And then you start getting up to go to someplace a bit more auspicious to study, and you fall completely asleep. But right in that deep sleep, you have a dream. Oh, I could wake up. Innumerable Zen students have woken up to alertness in the middle of dullness. Now, that may be surprising to you, is it? It wouldn't be surprising if I said that Zen students have been sleepy. Innumerable Zen students have felt dullness and boredom. Everybody knows that. But once in a while, but also once in a while among a large number is innumerable.

[98:19]

In a while, innumerable Zen students wake up in the middle of dullness. Dullness and distraction are struck aside. But not because you have to go someplace. The struck in your side is right there with them all the time. And this does not mean that it's wrong to try to be more awake. It's fine to do that. But right in the middle of trying to be more awake is not trying to be more awake. That's a Mahayana meditation. And that's not trying to get rid of some people who are trying to be more awake. They're welcome. Wholeheartedly welcome. Last one, so should we go with that?

[99:22]

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