I was going to say that sorry that some people are not here tonight because it's going to be good. But then I thought that it was suggested to me by someone that I start the class by reviewing the last class. So maybe next class I'll review this class so they won't miss it all. So the last two classes, there was two, right, so far? So in a sense, the first class, as I just said to you, the true path of enlightenment is to sit upright in the midst of a certain kind of awareness. And sitting upright is a kind of awareness too. It's a kind of awareness that's recommended of the way to enter this self-fulfilling awareness. Sitting upright is an awareness.

[01:00]

It's sitting, but it's sitting upright. And that's the way to enter the self-fulfilling awareness, which in this class could be called the awareness of the Genjo Koan, or awareness of Genjo Koan. And so we spent time talking about the title, and the title of Genjo Koan... The koan means is the reality of our life. And the genjo is our current happening of our life. Now the reality of our life is also that the current happening is none other than the reality of it. So Genjo Kwan is saying that the present happening life is none other than the reality of our life.

[02:13]

Now the reality of our life is not just that our life happens. It's also that our life is a particular thing and a universal thing. It's also that the truth of our life is that we are all interdependent. And that truth that we're all interdependent is none other than our current fleeting experience. the entire world the entire phenomenal world is none other than the living Buddha way that's slightly different from saying for example that a cruel act is the Buddha way a cruel act is none other than what?

[03:32]

than the truth of our life. The truth of our life is that a cruel act is an act that arises from ignorance of our interdependence. But an act that arises from ignorance of interdependence is none other than the truth of our interdependence. And an act that arises from awareness of interdependence will always be a kind act. But that kind act in the present moment is none other than the reality of our interdependence. Our universal, we have a universal and an individual existence. Our existence is universal because it depends on the universe. and the universe makes individuals.

[04:36]

That's part of the truth of our life. And that universal and individual quality of our life is never apart from what's happening right now. But what's happening right now can be that we are ignoring the truth of our life. And the way things work is that if we ignore the truth of our life, then the manifestation current manifestation will be more or less painful. However, that painful manifestation is actually none other than the truth, which, if recognized, liberates the entire universe from suffering. Meditation on how whatever is happening is none other than the truth of what's happening, and the truth of the entire life, world, living world, that meditation is a Genjo Koan.

[05:43]

The Koan is the truth of our life. The Koan is the treasury of true Dharma eyes. This Genjo Koan occurs in a text called the Treasury of True Dharma Eyes. The Treasury of True Dharma Eyes is what has been conveyed from Buddha to Buddha. The koan has been conveyed from Buddha to Buddha, has been shared between Buddhas and Buddhas, and is now being shared between Buddhas. The koan is being shared. But the koan is also being shared by all beings. Some people are not aware that they're sharing the koan. Some beings are not aware that they're sharing the treasury of true Dharma eyes with everybody else right now. If they're not aware, they suffer. If you think you're not sharing the treasury of true Dharma eyes now, that's not correct.

[06:54]

But still, if you think this incorrect thing, you will be relatively more or less uncomfortable. Still, if you are feeling that way, if you actually do not understand in your body and mind that you are now conveying and having conveyed to you the treasury of two dharma eyes, if you do not understand that you are batting the koan back and forth between yourself and all beings, then you're... uncomfortable, but still that discomfort is none other than the koan, which is being ignored. Or we're believing something other than that story I just told. Maybe that's enough of a review.

[08:04]

If you have any questions, you can ask later about that review. Now I'd like to move on to the text, which says... One translation is... This translation you have is, as all dharmas are Buddha dharma, there is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death, and there are Buddhas and sentient beings. And again, sentient beings means living beings who are not awake... the koan even though these living beings who are not awake to the koan are none other than the koan they are actually the koan but they are misled and they think there's something separate than the koan they think the koan is something at least a little bit different from what they are they think the truth of their life is one thing and their life is another that's a sentient being I don't know, there may be some sentient beings in the room here, but anyway, whether there are in the room or not, I've heard there are some someplace.

[09:11]

Some beings who do not understand, who are being misled by the impression that the truth, that the living truth, the liberating truth, that the truth of liberation, that freedom and peace and happiness are separate from your present misery. if you happen to be miserable. You can be in great pain and that pain is inseparable from the truth. You can also be in bliss and your bliss is inseparable from the truth of your life. Of course, right? And yet we sort of have an impression that maybe there's a little separation. That's a sentient being. And so the Buddha has taught there are such beings And there are also beings who understand that the colon is inseparable from the genjo. The next sentence is, as myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no birth and death.

[10:29]

That's the second sentence. Pretty simple, huh? Next sentence is, the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. Thus, there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas. It may be that what we talked about already in terms of the title can now be used to unlock these sentences. Does your hand raise, Michael? Yes? Yeah, myriad is 10,000. And in Buddhism, 10,000 means pretty much more than 10,000. 10,000 is code for infinite. But they... like to be concrete and just use 10,000 for infinite in Japanese they have one of their favorite currency denominations is called a man which is 10,000 yen myriad yen kind of like

[11:59]

tuning into infinite in. OK, so I just say right off, you know, here's one way to understand these three sentences. The first sentence is basically saying, here's what Buddha taught. Buddha taught the Buddha Dharma and the whole universe. He taught as Buddha Dharma. He taught about the whole universe without the whole thing. And what did he teach? He said, there's delusion and enlightenment, and there's practice, and there's birth and death, and there's Buddhas and sentient beings. He taught that kind of stuff. This is the first sentence is the Buddha taught. An ocean of teachings. Some people say that this first sentence actually contains the next few, but it's hard to see that it does.

[13:15]

One way that you can understand that it teaches the next sentences is that he taught practice. There's practice. So he taught that there's a delusion and enlightenment, and there's birth and death, and there's those who are deluded and are enlightened, and there's a practice by which you can study delusion and become a Buddha. That includes the next two sentences, because the next two sentences I suggest to you are basically about how to practice the first sentence. What's the first sentence? When everything is, or as everything is Buddha Dharma, as everything is Buddha Dharma, then there's Bernard, and Michael, and Lee, and Tracy, and Vera, and Elena, and Deirdre, and John, and trees, and Donald, and buildings, and Reb, and mountains,

[14:35]

maryland and oceans and suffering and health and birth and death that's what the buddha taught and that's what there is everything that there is is what the buddha teaches and he taught practice and what's the practice Practice is indicated by the next sentence and the next sentence. The next sentence is, as all these things are without abiding self, there are no, there is no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth and death. The second sentence is teaching you how to relate to the first sentence.

[15:37]

He taught you this huge teaching about everything, which is one teaching about everything. And then now, how do you practice with everything? You remember that everything is one teaching. In a sense, the second sentence is saying, be upright. That's how to practice with the first sentence. How do you practice with the fact that some people are deluded and suffer, and other people are enlightened and are free? How do you practice with that? Be upright. How do you practice being upright? You receive, you listen to the teaching, but there is no practice. Actually, didn't say no practice.

[16:41]

That's important. You listen to the teaching that there's no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no ignorance, no delusion, no enlightenment, no Buddhas, no sentient beings, no birth, no death. You listen to that teaching about sentient beings, Buddhas, enlightenment, and delusion. This is being upright. In other words, you give up involvement and conceptual thought. That's being upright. That's how you enter the awareness of Genjo Kwan. You hear the Buddha's teaching, right? Buddha said, here's the teaching. You hear that. And then the Buddha says, or the Buddha's assistant says, no teaching. That's the sort of general thing, the specific thing the Buddha teaches.

[17:44]

There's enlightenment. Because I'm teaching you now, the Buddha is saying, I'm teaching you now, OK? Ready? Get set. There's birth. I just taught you something. I taught you there's birth. You knew that before, but this time I'm telling you. Now it's a teaching. There's death. You already heard about that, but now it's Buddha-dharma. Now, since it's Buddha Dharma, it's a teaching. And now you have this teaching. There's death. It's not just death anymore. It's a teaching. You're not just being told that there's delusion and suffering arises from delusion. You're not just being told that this is a teaching. This is a Buddha teaching. This is a teaching of the Buddha. And this teaching, of course, should be understood in an upright fashion. Namely, you should understand that your ideas of what this teaching is, in general and specifically, is that the meaning of birth is that there is no birth.

[19:02]

Any idea you have of birth, there isn't any. Or, another way to put it is, if you want to understand the Buddhist teaching about birth, give up your ideas about birth. Don't get involved in your conceptual thought about death. Don't get involved in your conceptual thoughts about Buddhas or sentient beings or enlightenment or ignorance. The second sentence does not say practice. The third sentence does not say practice. The first sentence says there's practice. The second sentence does not say there is no practice. That's because when there's no self, That's when there really is practice. There is practice. Buddha taught there's practice. There is practice. But when there's really practice, you don't mention it. The second sentence doesn't mention practice because the second sentence is about practice. The first sentence is the teaching.

[20:05]

The second sentence is telling you how to practice. Therefore, it doesn't mention practice. And it all especially doesn't mention that there's no practice because, in fact, in the second sentence, that is where practice lives. It lives in no abiding self. It lives in no abiding self of enlightenment or delusion. If enlightenment and delusion have abiding self, then... they're going to be separate. If delusion and enlightenment have abiding self, then they're going to be separate. If Buddhas and sentient beings have abiding self, they're going to be separate. But this teaching is that they're not separate. This teaching is no matter what's happening, you're not separate from the truth, from the living Buddha way. And the reason why you're not separate is because Buddha way doesn't have a self, and no matter what's happening to you, that thing that's happening doesn't have a self

[21:12]

There's no way to separate what's happening from the truth of your life, because neither one of them have self. And also, if you open to that, you get to enter that. But if I hold on to my conceptual thought, if I hold on to my involvement in conceptual thought, like, as all dharmas are Buddha dharmas, then there's birth and death and so on. If I hold on to that, if I get involved in that conceptual thought, then I'm not being upright. Then I'm not sitting upright or standing upright. And then, even though I'm hearing the teaching, I'm not in the proper mode to receive it, to practice with it. The first sentence is the teaching. Half the first sentence is the teaching. A sixth of the first sentence. As is the Buddha. As is the teaching. As, when, but, all that's Buddhist teaching.

[22:21]

No matter what, it's a Buddhist teaching. But in order to receive it, we have to not get in, we have to give up involvement in conceptual thoughts like, you have concepts of those things, did you? You have concepts of those? Did you see the concepts of them? You didn't see the concepts of them? You didn't? How would you know if you didn't have a concept of them? Is what I just said different from, oh, say, can you see? Is it different from that? So second sentence is how you enter the first sentence. Third sentence says, what does it say?

[23:25]

It says, the Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. So in the first sentence, did you see many and one? Did you see many in one? No? Well, there was the one teaching, the big teaching of the Buddha, and then there was all the little many's there. There was the Buddhas and the sentient beings and the birth and the death and the practice and the ignorance. To leap beyond all that, That's the Buddha way. That's the practice. The practice is leaping. Part of the practice, actually, is no involvement in birth, death, quotes birth, quotes death, quotes enlightenment, quotes delusion, quotes sentient beings, quotes.

[24:40]

Part of it's not being upright, part of the practice. Then from that being upright, there is leaping. When you give up involvement in conceptual thoughts about life in general, but in particular about the teaching, then the practice becomes leaping, [...] leaping out of like one and many, or like abundance and lack, as in her translation. Plenitude and dearth. plenty of enlightenment and dearth of delusion or dearth of enlightenment and plenty of delusion. No, yeah. Or dearth of pleasure and plenty of suffering or plenty of suffering and dearth of pleasure. Practice is not plenty of suffering and dearth of pleasure or plenty of suffering and plenty of pleasure.

[25:43]

Those don't go together very well. But anyway, it's not, practice is not the Buddha's and the sentient beings. Practice is leaping beyond Buddhas and sentient beings. And then when you leap beyond Buddhas and sentient beings, what do you get? It says in the text. That's an easy one. When you leap beyond Buddhism sentient beings, what does the text say you get? No. No, you get Buddhism sentient beings. It said, it's leaping clear of the one and the many, thus there are birth and death, Buddhism sentient beings. When you leap beyond all this stuff, you're in this stuff. When you leap beyond birth and death,

[26:46]

Leaping beyond birth and death, thus there's birth and death. Leaping beyond delusion and enlightenment, there's delusion and enlightenment. Then you're back to the first sentence. But now it's the first sentence arising from the practice. It's arising from leaping, which is based on not clinging to your ideas about the teaching or the world. Or the teaching about the world is none other than the teaching. the nature of the world the title kind of like seems to me get you ready for this and then these three sentences tell you basically there's there's a teaching and this is the practice and yeah so now you're ready to maybe ask some questions or just go ahead and

[27:50]

listen to the teaching and then listen to the teaching to not listen to your ideas of the teaching you just heard. Again, I said to you before, Lin Ji said, you know, I really shouldn't say anything, but if I don't, you might not give a foothold, so come here. Come close and I'll give you something to work with. And then he said, speak, speak. And he's trying to help this monk give up his conceptual approach to the teacher and the teaching. But it looks like the monk couldn't give up his conceptual approach, so he couldn't leave. So Lin Ji picked him up and threw him across the room. By the way, at the end of class, I just remembered another story about Lin Ji. When he was about to die, he was talking to his senior disciple, and the senior disciple said something like, you know, 100 years from now, which means after you die, polite way of saying after you die, a common question to ask old teachers, 100 years from now, if someone asked me, you know, about your teaching, how should I describe it?

[29:20]

And Linji said, just don't destroy my shobo genzo. Just don't destroy my treasury of true dharma eyes. And then his disciple yelled at him, shouted at him. And Linji said, who would have thought that my treasury of true dharma eyes would be destroyed by a blind ass? transmission, that was his transmission of the Chobogenzo to this guy. And after that, the Chobogenzo, the treasury of two dharma eyes, of yelling at people, was actually destroyed. After that, nobody could do it anymore. That's why, you may notice, I don't ever yell. It was destroyed back in the Tang Dynasty. So they're trying to say, okay, here's the teaching there.

[30:21]

You've got the teaching. What's the teaching? It's none other than what's happening. You've got the teaching now. Please approach that teaching without any clinging to your concepts. And then there will be leaping. And then when there's leaping, basically it will be have the world as the teaching. The teaching as the world. The teaching, the world will be Genjo Koan. we will realize Genjo Koan. I mean, Koan will be Genjo for us. First we have to take in the teaching, which you've already taken in. Now take in no birth, no death, no Buddhas, no sentient beings. Which doesn't mean there's no Buddhas and sentient beings. It just means there's no Buddhas or San Jim Daines according to any of our ideas of them. There's no such things as those Buddhas which we are thinking about.

[31:22]

Are any of you thinking about Buddhas? You don't want to say you're scared? Chicken? To say you are thinking of Buddhas? Or thinking of something else and you're embarrassed to say? What are you thinking about, by the way? I'm not going to yell, don't worry. What are you thinking about? Are you thinking about anything? Not much. Are you not thinking about Buddhas? Are you thinking about Buddhas? Buddha, Buddha, Buddha. Are you thinking about Buddha? Nobody's thinking about Buddha? I'm the only one? Two or three. This is the Buddha section over here. So you're thinking about Buddha. That's okay. It's okay that he's not. Thinking about Buddhas, but now that you're thinking about Buddhas, do you have somebody's concept of Buddha while you're thinking about Buddha? No. When you say the word Buddha, you have some concept? When you think of Buddha, do you have a concept there? Do you have a kind of concept you have?

[32:31]

Is it kind of like form it? Yeah. OK, good. So anyway, that one, or do you have a more coherent one? Do you have a kind of, what are you, soggy, amorphous? Okay, I'm going to have to give a nice clear Buddha. Okay, there's a beautiful, I got a clear one. Anyway, we have these different ideas of Buddha. Some of you think Buddha is a good thing? Anybody think Buddha is a good thing? Yeah. You're not sure? No, no. Oh, yeah. Yeah, okay. So that's an idea. It's not that Buddha is not good. It's just that Buddha is not good. your idea or your idea of good or my idea of good, and Buddha's also not bad, but also Buddha's not my idea of bad, and also not my idea of not bad. That's not Buddha. Also Michael is not bad, but he's not my idea. Michael's not bad. That is the second sentence.

[33:35]

No eyes, no ears, no nose. But that doesn't mean there's no eyes or ears or nose. It just means there's no eyes, anything remotely related. Well, it's remotely related. Eyes are remotely related to your idea of eyes because your eyes are actually the basis of your ideas of eyes. But there's nothing in the eyes which are the basis of your idea of eyes, nothing in the eyes, anything like your idea of eyes. But there's a relationship between eyes and ears and nose to your ideas of eyes and ears and nose. The relationship is that because there's eyes and ears and nose, we can have ideas of them. But our ideas are totally absent in the eyes and ears and so on. The eyes and ears are empty of any ideas we have of eyes and ears. And Buddha is totally empty of any idea you have of Buddha. Any idea you have of what Buddha looks like, Thanks for telling me that you have to leave, Marjorie. Good luck on your telephone call.

[34:40]

That's the second sentence. And that's how to practice with Buddha's teachings, with Buddha's teaching and everything, because everything is Buddha's teaching, because Buddha teaches everything. But how do you practice with that teaching? By remembering that, of course, you can't receive the teaching except by some conceptual rendition of it so you can grasp it. But whatever the teaching is, it's empty of your way that you grasp it. That's being upright with the teaching. And then when you're that way with it, then you naturally, your body and mind leap beyond all these categories. Your body and mind leap beyond your ideas, but also they leap beyond any duality between the big dualities. that your body-mind leap beyond the duality of Buddha and sentient being. And Buddhas are over on the side of Buddha and the non-Buddha relationship.

[35:47]

Buddhas are over on the Buddha side. But they don't cling to the Buddha side because they know they're totally intimate with the other side. So because of that, they keep leaping beyond Buddha. They don't leap over to be a sentient being. They just keep leaping out of being a Buddha. They keep becoming free of a Buddha, but then that makes more Buddhas. Being free of Buddhas makes Buddhas, and being free of sentient beings makes Buddha. And being stuck in Buddha makes a sentient being, and being stuck in a sentient being makes a sentient being. But if a sentient being stops sticking to ideas that sentient beings have, which they do, and Buddhas have ideas too, but if sentient beings stop getting stuck in their ideas, Then the sentient being leaps beyond the duality of sentient beings and Buddha, and then sentient beings no longer sentient beings. They're Buddha, which is inseparable because there's a leap beyond the separation from the sentient being that they were before and the Buddha, which they are now.

[36:53]

And so they're back with sentient beings and Buddhas and birth and death. which they now leap beyond because they continue to practice with what's happening, which is the Buddha's teaching. What's happening is the Buddha's teaching. What's happening is the Buddha Dharma. But we have to keep emptying ourselves of clinging to our ideas of these things and realize all things are empty of our ideas of them. Then we leap. And that's the Buddha way, leaping. leaping clear or bursting forth. Tom Cleary says, it originally springs forth from abundance and lack. The Buddha way actually springs forth from duality because it's the medicine for duality. It springs forth from duality and it leaps beyond.

[37:58]

So it leaps beyond and it springs forth are related. It springs forth so thoroughly that it actually comes from what it springs forth from. It springs forth without dissociating. I mean, it really springs free. So free that it doesn't have to get away from. So then at the end, because of that, it's back where it started. It springs forth, and then it's back. It springs forth from abundance and lack, and therefore we have abundance and lack. Isn't that cool? That's an interpretation of the first three sentences, an interpretation. There's many other possibilities because what I just said is empty of any ideas I have of what I just said, like that it was cool. Empty of that idea. It's also empty of the idea that it wasn't cool, which I didn't say, but you can think that.

[39:02]

Are you thinking that? No. All right. Grasping that. OK. So you want to express something? Elena? I think that it's difficult to give up one's idea about the way you're taught when you're in a practical world. Yeah. You don't feel bad. You know that things are going to work in a certain way. You know that things are going to work. No, you think things are going to work in a certain way. When they do. When you think they do. When you think they do. When you think they do. Then it's difficult to give up what you think they're doing. It's difficult to give up what you think is happening. It's difficult to give up not what's happening, but what you think is happening.

[40:05]

We're actually giving up what's happening all the time because things are changing very nicely. But we're not with the program. We have our ideas of what's happening, and although you can't hold on to what's happening because it's changing, you can't hold on to your ideas of what's happening because everything's empty of those, and you can hold on to those. They'll hold still. But it's hard to give up those, because those are our little hooks. It is hard. And the fact that it's hard is another thing to give up your idea about. Give up my idea that it's hard to give up my ideas? I just said, I just agreed with you, but I also, I really do agree with you it's hard. Why not? It looks like it is. It actually is hard, but I have to give up my idea of how hard it is.

[41:07]

Then I can leap. From where? From how hard it is. You can also leap from how easy it is. If you happen to be thinking it's easy, you can leap from there. It's abundantly easy. It's abundantly clear. Now there's where you leap from, if that's what you got up to. Or it's abundantly unclear and difficult. There's a positive of... And you can leap from there. From positive and abundance, the Buddha way is leaping forth. That's what the Buddha way is. You want to find the Buddha way? Look at what's leaping forth from duality. Look at what's stuck in duality. That's called, you know, suffering. Buddha way, however, is continuously leaping forth right under our nose. So watch out for your nose. So we're leaping forth.

[42:12]

So we need to give up our idea of what's going on so that we need to be upright and give up our idea in order to enter the realm where there's a leaping forth from duality, from hard and easy. from sickness and health, from healthy people and sick people, from Buddhas and sentient beings. Buddha teaches there is health, there is sickness, there is birth, there is death, there is hard, there is easy. Buddha teaches that. And when Buddha says it, it's Buddha's teaching. Want to understand that? Then listen to it. When there's no self, that's the practice situation. No self of what? Of the Buddha's teaching. Because that's what you're studying, which just happens to be everything. So you apply that to everything.

[43:14]

What do you apply? Oh. In the context of no self, that means things are empty of a fixed self. In other words, my idea of them or your idea of them, that they're fixed in that self, that they have that individual, conceptual, isolated, It would be nice, yeah. When I first came to Zen Center, I went to visit the president. This is the short version of my first visit. If you want the longer version, please request me to give it. But I'll just give you the short version of my first visit to the San Francisco Zen Center at 1881 Bush Street. So I went there, and I was told to go see the president. I went to see him. I went to his house.

[44:15]

He said, please sit down. And I went through the chair. I sat in the chair, but I went through the chair to the ground, to the floor of his apartment. I did not go through the floor of the apartment, though. And he said to me, you must be dense. Huh? Dense. Later, he said, you must dance. At that point, he said, you must be dense. So sometimes in the Zen stories, they do go through the chairs. And sometimes it's good. And actually, one time I said to somebody, somebody was asking me about burnout. How does burnout happen? And I said, if you sit in a chair, if you sit in chairs and assume that they will hold you, that's the source of burnout.

[45:20]

Tracy's face twitches. To approach things with assumptions and then act from the assumption, that burns us out. But to approach the thing to say, okay, I've got an assumption that this chair will hold me, but I give up that assumption now. And now I approach the chair having given up the assumption that it will hold me. Now what do you do? You still might sit in it, but you sit in it differently. And if you sit in chairs that way, you won't get burnout. you'll get, you'll leap. You'll leap. You sit down with the expectation. Yeah, yeah. Same. You expect, you reach for the doorknob, and you expect it to open, but you don't notice you expect, and you act on the expectation rather than, I expect this doorknob to work.

[46:24]

Now let's see, I won't get involved in that expectation, and now I'll see what actually happens. works or doesn't work. Now you think it probably will, and maybe it will, maybe it won't, but you really gave up your idea that it will, and you're now going forward in this leaped out position. And if you approach chairs and people this way, students and teachers, if you approach them this way, this protects you from burnout. Every time And you may not notice that sitting in a chair, expecting it to hold you, that you get burned out, but if that was your job, that was your job, just to sit in chairs and then get up and sit in a chair and then get up and sit in a chair and every time you did that, it held you and every time you assumed it would, you would soon burn out in your job. You would soon start planning ways to get out of that job and go someplace because you could see your life is running out

[47:27]

through your expectations. Your life is draining. You're draining your blood through acting on expectation rather than saying no to the idea the chair will hold you or no to the idea that the chair won't hold you. Either one. The point is you've got to be upright and not get involved in your ideas of who people are or who you are or who they aren't or who you aren't. We have these ideas. Fine. Those are Buddha-dharmas coming to you. This is good stuff. Nothing wrong with your ideas about people being this way or that way. That's the Buddha-dharma. When you think of something, that's the Buddha-dharma. That's the Buddha-dharma coming to you, but how do you unlock it? How does it get unlocked? How do you practice that? Well, whatever it is, you practice it by all these things that are coming have no abiding self. So there is no doorknob and there is no chair, or, you know, unbroken chair, or broken chair, there is no such thing as that.

[48:35]

There is a chair, but it's not my idea of chair. Then we're leaping. Then the Buddha way is happening. This is the, this kind of awareness is the awareness, the self-fulfilling awareness. This is the awareness of the Genjo Koan. And we enter it, The second sentence, you enter it. The third sentence, you realize it. And realizing it puts you right nowhere other than where you are. You started where you were and you wound up where you are. In the process, you realize the teaching of the situation. The teaching was already there and now you realize it by this practice. So that's why at the end of the thing it says, well, the nature of wind is permanent and it reaches everywhere, right? So why do you have to practice? You understand the nature of it being permanent, but you don't understand it reaching everywhere. So the Dharma is coming at you all the time.

[49:38]

It never isn't. In that sense, that's the wind. The Dharma is the wind. It's permanent. No matter what's happening, it's being given to you. The Buddhists think you're asking for the teaching and they're giving it to you all the time. It's always coming to you. But if you don't practice, you won't experience it reaching you. What's the practice? First of all, be upright. Give up your idea about what the wind is. That's the practice. Then leap beyond your idea. Is there a center to the moment? Is there a center? Yes, there is. But you must give up your idea of what the center is. That's the center. And also, I have to give up my idea. That new idea of what the center is has to be given up too.

[50:40]

And that's the center again. And that's where you lead, huh? Can I pass? Can I pass? Can I pass? You just got to give it up anyway. Think of some new stuff yourself and give up your stuff. That's not right. Yeah, right. And that's where you leap from. As soon as you give it up, you leap. Or there's leaping. And then the Buddha way is alive. You've entered and it's leaping. And where does it leap you to? Back to a moment. Which can have anything in it. Now people may say, well, you know, won't the moment change a little bit? They might. You know, if you practice this way, you might have more moments happening where you do not hate people. It may happen that, you know, you have less hate moments if you do this practice. But if there is a hate moment, if that happens, what's the practice?

[51:49]

The Buddha taught that there was hate. This is a Buddha Dharma. Now how do I wake up to the Dharma of this moment of hate? If I can, if it's possible, is it possible to say, no abiding self to this hate? This hate is empty of my idea of hate, especially this person who I hate, you know, this person or this person that I hate. There's nothing about what I hate in the person. Then I leap free of this moment of hate, which is, of course, that's the Buddha way. And it's a moment of love. True love. I remember that there's none of my idea of true love in this true love. And I leap, or there's leaping beyond true love, and of course there's leaping beyond untrue love, or no love at all, at the same time.

[52:52]

And that's true love. That's the Buddha's love. The Buddha keeps, the Buddha is the leaping beyond her ideas of true love and true hate. But the Buddha almost never has the thought of, I hate someone, but the Buddha prunes into certain stations where hate is being, where hate's on the channel. And then, and then that hate which is appearing, which is manifesting, is the Buddha Dharma. Now, how do we understand the Dharma of this? No abiding self will be the place I'll practice with this. And then there's leaping out of that back into maybe more hate. That's right.

[53:57]

You have no control, and I have no control over making you remember either. Buddha can't like take Steve and go, now he's turned into that station, he's going to stay there. Even though Buddha wants you to do that, but Buddha also does not, Buddha leaps beyond thinking that, you know, how wonderful it would be if you remembered and how not so wonderful if you forget Buddha leaps beyond that and that leaping beyond is Buddha's response to you moment by moment and you can hear the teaching that you can want it's okay to want to remember this all the time it's fine it's fine but then you have to like leap beyond that And leaping beyond that, although it doesn't control the situation, that leaping beyond is the Buddha way.

[55:05]

And the Buddha way is not trying to control and get everybody on track because it doesn't really think that people are not on track. Because not on track is not the least bit separate from on track. That non-separation is the real truth, not the on-track and off-track. Sophie? What about intuition? Leap beyond intuition? Definitely. It's one of the most important things to leap beyond. And what happens when you leap beyond intuition? What does the text say happens when you leap beyond? Yeah. There's leaping beyond, and therefore there's intuition. Leap beyond intuition, and therefore there's intuition.

[56:11]

That's the principle here. The Buddha teaches there's birth, death, intuition, and lack of intuition. Okay? All right? And practice. But in the context of no self, There's no intuition and no lack of intuition and no birth and no death and so on. So when intuition arises, you need to also realize that intuition does not have a self. It isn't like the bad things don't have self or people don't have self, but intuition does. Intuition also is a dependent core arising. Intuition happens because of a person and a universe that the person has an intuition about. Therefore, intuition does not have a fixed self. It has a self, not a fixed one, not a solid one. Just a kind of, oh, this is intuition and this is not kind of a self.

[57:16]

And whatever idea you have of intuition is not in the intuition. Intuition is wonderful. And so is Li. But no idea we have of Li is in Li. And no idea we have of intuition is in intuition therefore we say no intuition then because if you take that and you live with that then there's a leaping beyond intuition then the intuition is the occasion for the Buddha way and because of that there's intuition but now the intuition is again realized as inseparable from the Buddha way And there's no attachment to the intuition. Prior to that, some people are attached to intuition. Some people actually probably don't like their intuition. Some people have intuitions that they don't like. They like to get rid of them. Other people have high-quality intuitions and they're really attached to them.

[58:17]

They're proud to be intuitive. So that's something to... there's pride to be a pride at intuition okay what do you do with that you realize there's no pride of intuition there's no any idea you have about proud of intuition is not in the pride of intuition then you leap beyond your pride of intuition then you have pride of intuition which is now the Buddha way which means there's no attachment to pride of intuition to say well that's pretty lousy pride I would say okay Fine. Low quality pride. But living Buddha way. On the occasion of whatever. Proud, ashamed. Petra? Oh yeah, thanks.

[59:21]

I forgot to mention the danger. Yeah. Right. Good point. Right. Right. So one of the dangers here, ironically, or surprisingly, is that when we come, when we hear the teaching, Usually we hear the teaching and we imagine the teaching has a self. It's a Buddha's teaching after all, so probably it has a self. You know, it must be substantial. It's the Buddha's teaching. The Buddha, you know, things are impermanent, right? You've heard about that. But the Buddha's not impermanent. Well, yes, the Buddha is impermanent too. Even though there's teachings that the Buddha nature's permanent, still, I would suggest at this point that Jesus realized the Buddha

[60:24]

that enlightenment is impermanent and empty, that Buddha is empty. And when you hear that kind of stuff, you may think, well, then I guess they don't have to practice. So that's the danger, that you would think you won't have to practice when you hear that things are empty of your idea of them. You might slip into thinking, well, nothing matters, or everything's the same, But everything the same is another idea which things are empty of. Things are empty of, not everything's the same. And things are empty of, doesn't matter. And I don't need to practice this empty of my idea if I don't need to practice. I can think, oh, I don't need to practice. That's fine. That's Buddha and Dharma too. Now you've got, I don't need to practice now because of this emptiness. That's a big danger of emptiness. I don't need to practice because everything's empty. Causation's empty. It's true. then to think that because causation is empty, nothing matters, is to fill that cloth, which is a causation, with substance.

[61:33]

So that's a big danger, is to think, I don't have to practice the precepts anymore, I don't have to practice whatever anymore, because everything's empty. And one of the main rules of the second step is, the second step of... Again, I mentioned to you that the second step, it doesn't say no practice. Because when all dharmas lack self, it's not true that there's no practice. There is practice. That's where there is practice. That's why he doesn't say there's no practice. Now, in the realm of emptiness is where practice really thrives. That's where compassion really blossoms. But if you don't understand emptiness correctly, one of the signs you don't understand it correctly is... that you think, compassion doesn't matter, precepts don't matter. And the general rule is, if you've had those kinds of thoughts, I don't have to practice anymore, precepts don't matter, doesn't good and bad are the same, because they're both empty. If you say good and bad are the same, because they're both empty, it's true, and therefore I will be more thorough in my practice of kindness and compassion and precepts than ever before, then you understand emptiness properly.

[62:51]

But if you think, when you hear this teaching, that you can lighten up on your precept practice and do whatever you want, then you should stop the second sentence practice. You should give up that practice and go back to, what do you call it, the first sentence. There's mutas and sentient beings, birth and death, ignorance and the like, go back to that and grab it hard. Until you say, I better practice the precepts, I better practice this practice and I better do it because I don't want to be one of those sentient beings which are separate from the Buddhas. Then, okay, this is not the practice, but at least you're trying to practice. It's better to try to practice than to get advanced and not practice. Like that story of the guy who came to the psychiatrist and he had a click. And he said, would you hypnotize me to take my tick away?

[63:55]

And the psychiatrist hypnotized him to take the tick away. And he says, great, the tick's gone. And then he started manifesting some other really kind of like unfortunate behavior pattern. And so he said, well, would you hypnotize me to take that one away? And the psychiatrist hypnotized him and took that one away. And then he came out of the hypnosis and said, how are you feeling? He said, fine, that's gone too. Psychiatrist said, great. And then the guy started walking towards the psychiatrist and put his hands in the mudra, strangling psychiatrist. Started reaching to the psychiatrist's neck and the psychiatrist immediately hypnotized and gave him a tick back. So Buddhism is kind of like that. If you try to get rid of something, you get something worse. So better go back to your original problem.

[64:59]

And then if you can practice emptying it, continue your practice, it's okay, but if you stop, if your practice starts getting shaky, you should give up what makes real practice. And what makes real practice is practicing in the context of meditating on all dharmas, lacking abiding self. Then you can really practice thoroughly into the leaping beyond duality phase. But you've got to watch to make sure you're not getting slack in your diligence in any of the practices you were doing, which made it possible for you to do this practice. Well, it's time to stop again. So thank you very much. And if anybody wants a, you know, There's some copies here of the text for you to take home, which are on the thinner paper for you to take if you'd like to take home.

[66:00]

Also, one other small thing, which is really a big thing, which is an important thing, I really would suggest that we memorize the text. I will not ask you to stand up and do it in class unless you tell me you've already memorized it when you'd like to recite it, but I recommend you memorize this text. is the traditional thing to do.

[66:27]

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