When the Buddha first started to teach, in effect, what he presented right off was things which he said were true. He presented truths right at the beginning. He didn't start by, I don't know what, some other way. And the truths he presented were, we say, the Four Noble Truths, which we've been talking about now for a while, about 2,500 years. By the way, I informed the Eno that the official Zen Center date of Shakyamuni Buddha's Parinirvana

[01:12]

has now been set. It is 483 BCE. Now that's not a truth, that's just a Zen Center official date, there's still some scholarly debate about that, but we're just going to choose that date, whereas the Buddha presented the way things really are, not just some kind of scholarly conclusion. So you have some background in this now, but I thought that before going into some more detail about what's involved in his teaching of the truth, it would be good to get some more background on where this stuff comes from, where this teaching, where these Four

[02:15]

Noble Truths come from, maybe, maybe where they come from, and how he kind of was, you know, in what sense did he offer these truths? In what way were they true for him, and what was the context from which he offered them? So for your consideration, I offer that the context in which he offered these Four Truths was from the context of his awakening, from the context of his liberation, from the context of his salvation, that he was saved. He experienced being saved, he experienced being liberated, he experienced being liberated by an awakening to a truth about the way his prison was.

[03:26]

He awakened to the nature of a kind of a prison situation, he said he awoke to the nature of the very bondage which he experienced liberation from. So the truth he told right off was the truth of bondage, and he also told about the truth of what it's like to be liberated. Before he was awakened, and the context of his awakening and his liberation was that before he was awakened and before he was liberated, while he was still experiencing being trapped, he experienced being trapped in a certain way, in a certain situation, and he experienced liberation from that situation. That's prior to his awakening, and the situation he seems to have been experiencing was that

[04:34]

he was in what is called samsara, and samsara means a circle. He found himself in a circle which he experienced and he believed, in a sense, he was going round and round in for an indefinite amount of time, and that he experienced other beings going round and round in the same cycle of birth and death, and that it was a very uncomfortable situation for him, and he wanted to become free of that situation, he wanted to become free of this round and round miserable cycle of birth, death, rebirth. That was kind of the way he talked about it before he was awakened, and when he was awakened he didn't just sort of throw out that whole idea, he said, yeah, I was awakened from that, I was liberated from that scene. And he kept talking about liberation in terms of liberation from that scene of samsara,

[05:37]

and this was the way a lot of people in his culture thought about the problem of being alive, was the problem of being alive was being caught in this kind of cycle of birth and death which is driven by ignorance and craving and so on. So, the background of his teaching of truth, in the back of his teaching of truth is a cosmology, and a cosmology is a doctrine or a teaching about the harmony and order

[06:45]

of the universe. Cosmos means order, originally, and it is extended to universal order. Cosmos also actually means order and harmony. Cosmology is a study of the order and harmony of the universe, as distinct from the chaos of the universe. The background of Buddha's teaching is a cosmic vision rather than a chaotic vision. And there's different cosmic visions that one could have, there's different cosmologies that one could be involved in. I think we could have, if some of us might enjoy looking at some other cosmologies besides

[07:51]

the one that Buddha had in his background, for example, I don't know, is the Divine Comedy a cosmology? I think so, it's a beautiful cosmology. And there's other cosmologies in the West too, and we have now a cosmology in our society which is a cosmology of astrophysics. So cosmology is not just a picture of any old thing, it's a picture of the order and harmony. So the order and harmony of the universe out of which the Four Noble Truths come is that the universe is actually orderly and harmonious, and it includes these two basic dimensions which I brought up the other night, namely a dimension called samsara, the circle of birth and death, which is non-stop, you know, unsatisfactory.

[08:59]

There are joys, but even the joys are ... there's a pain in your heart still, there's still anxiety even in joy in the samsara realm. And then there's this other realm which coexists but is completely separate from samsara called nirvana, which is a realm that is satisfying, is satisfied, and there it's non-stop happiness and it's a happiness which is incomparably ... incomparable to the happinesses that one knows in the samsaric world. And there's a harmony or order between these two also, they're not just ... they're related to each other even though they're separate. And the Buddha had this in mind.

[10:05]

Now before he attained awakening and liberation he had a feeling that there was a possibility of a more orderly, harmonious situation. I think he had ... yeah, he had some ... I think some hope that there would be a ... that there would be ... that the universe could be harmonious, in other words that there would be something to balance this misery. After awakening he found that balance. And his basic teaching, as we've talked about for a couple of years now here at Tassajara and other places, is dependent co-arising. Samsara and nirvana are dependently co-arising with each other. Nirvana is understanding the dependent co-arising of samsara. Samsara is not understanding the dependent co-arising of samsara and of course also not understanding the dependent co-arising of nirvana.

[11:06]

Nirvana also dependently co-arises with samsara because samsara in a sense is the content of nirvanic vision. So, they dependently co-arise, both of them, and in relationship to each other. Can you say a little bit more about samsara as the content of nirvana vision? When you understand samsara, when you see the dependent co-arising of samsara, meditating on samsara uprightly and then seeing how it dependently co-arises, that's how one realizes nirvana. So, nirvana is inseparable from samsara. Samsara is inseparable and the content of nirvana. Nirvana has content. It's not like, you know, it has a stomach, so to speak, and it digests samsara. You feed a Buddha samsara, it turns it into nirvana because it sees the dependent co-arising

[12:08]

of samsara. Okay, Ravi? No? Chew. Chew. Chew the samsara. Chew it. There's not much taste yet. Okay, so let me say a little bit more. Okay, so I would like to just tell you beforehand that I think it would be nice to discuss what cosmological visions you have in your background or not. And also just to say a little bit more here that I've said to a couple of people the last couple of days that samsara is basically messing with nirvana and nirvana is not messing with samsara. So, again, in that sense, samsara is the content of nirvana, nirvana is the way you are when

[13:15]

you don't mess with samsara anymore, and samsara is the way you are when you mess with nirvana. Of course, also you mess with samsara, anyway, messing with it, trying to fix it. And in that sense, you buy into it. Like I've mentioned before, you know, if you fight the devil, the devil's very happy. If you submit to the devil, the devil's happy. You become the disciple of the devil, the devil's happy. But even fighting, being anti-devil, you're the devil's disciple. Okay, Christina and Rick. Yes, and you say it's the content and they're inseparable, but then before you say nirvana is completely separate. Yeah. Yeah. So, I don't like those two statements. Oh, you don't understand. Inseparable and completely separate? Smile.

[14:16]

Somehow, to me, I can live with that. I hope you can too. I don't withdraw that. You and I are inseparable and completely separate. Like that. All things are inseparable and completely separate. If they weren't separate, they wouldn't exist, and they only exist because of their independence, so they're inseparable. Nirvana and samsara are non-dual. They're inseparable and also they're completely separate. They're not, you know, they don't kind of like mixing with each other. Miffin after Rick. How can one mess with nirvana? How can one mess with it? You can mess with it by trying to get it, trying to avoid it. You can mess with it by thinking it's this or that.

[15:32]

You can mess with it by wanting it for yourself and your friends rather than somebody else. Well, that's messing with yourself. Huh? That's messing with one's self and one's friends. Yes. Does it actually reach nirvana? Does it affect nirvana? Does it affect nirvana? No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't affect nirvana. That's right. It doesn't affect nirvana. But you can mess with something without affecting the thing. That's the thing about nirvana. You can mess with it and it doesn't get bothered at all. For example, yes. And you can mess with zazen too. But it doesn't hurt zazen. Okay? So messing with nirvana is not that nirvana gets messed with in the sense that nirvana gets pushed out of shape. It's that messing with nirvana, that messing is samsara. It's not nirvana being messed that's samsara. Nirvana being messed would be worse than samsara. Because then it would be like there wouldn't even be samsara nirvana anymore.

[16:36]

There would just be samsara. But the harmonious message from the Buddha is there is nirvana. This is the thing. He's actually proposing that nirvana is possible. Now, if messing with nirvana had anything to do with nirvana, in the sense of having an effect on nirvana, it would have been destroyed long ago. Even if Buddha had found it, his disciples would have wrecked it by all the kind of assaults and attempts they made to get it. But that's the thing about nirvana. It isn't touched. Zazen is not touched. It's completely beyond all human action. Nothing can touch zazen. Nothing can touch the way things are. However, messing with the way things are is called samsara. And messing with the way things are for us, when we mess with the way things are, that puts us not only into trouble, but repetitive, cyclic trouble, round and round. But nirvana is unassailable.

[17:38]

Unassailable. Unassailable. Samsara is messing with the unassailable. It's trying to make deals with something you can't make any deals with. And that kind of life is called unsatisfactory. And Mipham is next. When you said the fourth, I mean third truth, cessation is the emptiness of the Four Noble Truths? It's the emptiness of the Four Noble Truths? I thought you said something else. I did? I'm just going to think now. Is cessation the emptiness of the Four Noble Truths? No. The cessation of the Four Noble Truths is to realize the emptiness of the Four Noble Truths, but particularly is to realize the emptiness of... Realizing cessation occurs to a human being. A human being will realize cessation,

[18:41]

cessation of suffering, when that human being realizes that, for example, the self of the person lacks inherent existence and so on. Realizing the emptiness of various things opens the door to cessation. Cessation itself isn't emptiness any more than anything. No thing is emptiness. All things are marked by emptiness. Each thing has its emptiness, but no thing gets to be like the name of emptiness. Right? Well, we can get into that later, but anyway. There's nothing that appeared in the world which gets to be emptiness, but everything has its emptiness. You're starting to ask questions, but I think maybe what you really want me to do is present more material before you, because otherwise I think it's going to get less harmonious, it's going to be less cosmic and more chaotic.

[19:44]

You can have a little bit more cosmos before questions are answered. You can raise your hands, but I'm not going to call on you for a little while. And I propose to you now, and I hope to go into considerable detail in this world on this matter in the future, and that is that the Eightfold Noble Path are an eightfold presentation of eight dimensions of not messing with samsara. So in the realm of your view, what's a non-messing view? In terms of your intention, what's an intention? What's a motivation that's not a messing with samsara motivation? What's livelihood that doesn't mess with samsara? What does it mean to be in samsara and not mess with it in terms of livelihood, in terms of speech, in terms of posture, in terms of mindfulness, in terms of effort, in terms of concentration? What's a non-messing way, or non-meddling, non-interfering way to be in relationship to the world of samsara?

[20:48]

This Eightfold Path, I think, will open up different dimensions of how to not avoid samsara, not trying to fix samsara, but relate to it in this upright fashion that will realize the emptiness of samsara and realize the cessation of suffering. I also want to say this now. I don't know if I can get into it now, but I want to say this. And that is the issue of looking at these four truths presented by Buddha, looking at them, and there's different ways to look at their truth. And that is, in my book on the precepts, I talk about looking at the precepts from the conventional point of view, from the compassionate point of view, and from the ultimate point of view. Another way to do it would be to say

[21:58]

the conventional, literal point of view, the compassionate, practical point of view, and the ultimate, or liberating point of view, or dependent, co-arising point of view. There's different ways to look at the Four Noble Truths. And again, the question is, which way did the Buddha mean it? When he said, I have four truths, I teach you these four truths, there's four things I want to teach you, these four truths, did he mean them in the conventional, literal way, that he meant them literally true? Did he mean it would be useful if you believe these truths? Or did he mean that actually, these are truths, but they're truths which have dependently co-arisen, and I'm presenting them to you, but actually they're empty of inherent truth. And that's the way you should understand them. And that would be the most effective way to understand them,

[22:58]

and the most non-dual way. Which way did he mean them? So that's part of what I would like to touch upon with you a little bit anyway, at some point, maybe not this morning. But I would like to say this, and that is that in Zen, we are often said to be presenting a teaching which is a special transmission outside the scriptures. And in one sense that means a special transmission or a special spirit which is outside of words and phrases, which is free of literalness. However, that teaching, that special transmission, is based on receiving the teachings

[24:01]

and receiving a transmission of the teachings in the literal, conventional sense. So last year we spent quite a bit of time talking about the two truths, the conventional truth and the ultimate truth. And in this particular case, the literal truth has to be the basis for going into the ultimately liberating truth. We have to start by taking something literally before we can look at its ultimate, interdependent, liberating, empty reality. So... So the Buddha... So the question is, and I'll just say it looks like, the Buddha started out by teaching at this conventional, literal level, that he actually wanted people to, first of all, deal with his teaching of the Four Noble Truths at the literal, conventional level. That he was actually talking about things,

[25:04]

and he meant that I mean these things actually corresponding to the conventional world. That's the way I'm talking about this stuff now. And I want you to... That's the level at which I want you to think about this. And maybe not agree with me, but anyway, that's the level I'm talking. And some people will debate that he really never was presenting at that level. That he never meant it that way. Some other people will say, well, he didn't mean to, he wanted people to take it that way, but he never thought of it that way. He always meant it in the other way, and so on. This is something to... That's something I just told you about, right? And I present it to you in the morning, rather than in the evening. And I present it to you in the morning, so... Some of you... Some of you really work hard on your day off.

[26:05]

So the other nights, many of you were really struggling to stay awake, so I could not present this kind of thing then. You never would have heard it. But now I'm saying this to you, that there is this issue of what level of presentation are these truths coming from the Buddha? And I guess I feel like, in religious practice, you can't skip over the literal level. You have to deal with that. And at the literal level, you have to like, either literally believe it, or literally reject it. You can't just skip over that. Because in the literal world, there's just those two alternatives. I mean, it is literally true, or it is not. And you're going to do one or the other. And the basis upon which you would do it could be varied. Because a long time ago, people would have rejected the literal truth of the Four Noble Truths, or they would have literally accepted them.

[27:08]

But they lived in a different world, they had different reasons for their acceptance or rejection. Now we may have different reasons. For example, you people have heard about Nagarjuna and so on. So you're different from the people who heard the Buddha's teaching a long time ago. So do you literally believe that enlightenment, that cessation is possible for human beings, or do you literally not believe it? In fact, I think it's false. And if you literally believe it, then tell me about that. And if you literally don't, we maybe can discuss it about how come you don't.

[28:10]

And there's some arguments, there's quite a few arguments for, there's quite a few reasonings that can be made to literally, to uphold the literalness of enlightenment being happening. So, maybe that's enough now. And I just, let's see. I'm just sort of, I'll just tell you that this is kind of a warm up to things like this discussion of whether enlightenment really is possible for us, whether you believe that or not. And if you don't care, if you do believe it and don't care about it, what's happening there? And if you don't believe it, what's happening there? And if you do believe it and care, well, then I would say, good. Then what are you going to do about it? If you don't, in order to really work at these teachings,

[29:12]

at these practices, I think you need to deal with this. And so that's why I'm bringing it up. And the other thing is this issue of this discussion of past rebirth. That part of this thing, part of this presentation comes, part of the enthusiasm or the urgency of the Buddhist practice is based on rebirth. That's part of what makes samsara so unsatisfying, is that it's not just one life. And that's part of what makes nirvana so satisfying, is that it's not just one life. And I think that although some, Linda showed me that somebody did a survey of students at Zen Center and some other, Berkeley Zen Center and some other Zen Centers and two-thirds of them believed in rebirth.

[30:12]

But even those two-thirds, I don't know how, I don't know in what way they believed in it. There's different ways to believe in it. There's this conventional way and ultimate way and the practical way and all that. I'm not, I'm not trying to convince anybody of of a truth. But I guess I am trying to convince you of a study, a kind of study. And if I find that somebody is not studying something then I kind of get interested in them studying that. So it's not so much that I'm, it's not so much that I want you to literally believe in rebirth. But if you don't, and the reason why you don't is because you haven't even studied it, then I would like you to study it. And then after thoroughly studying it, then tell me

[31:16]

that you've discovered and you've verified it's a bunch of nonsense. That's how, that's how I am. I mean, that's how I am with situations. Does that make sense? That I'm that way? You see, the difference between wanting to convince you of some truth and wanting you to study that truth, if you're, if you don't agree, if you don't agree with it and you haven't studied it, I want you to study it. If you do agree with it, then I want to know how you, what you studied. I want you to study. So I guess what I really have faith in is study. I don't have faith in things, in people, in, you know, Buddhism and so on. I have faith in study of things. And I have faith in the mode of study and the mode of study naturally produces study. The mode of study is,

[32:18]

actually the mode of study is nirvana. So I, but I have faith in nirvana as a mode of study more than nirvana as a thing. So I really have faith in the Eightfold Path. I have faith in that as a way of study, as a way of being which produces study which then operates on truths and non-truths. So if someone doesn't believe in rebirth, that's fine, but how come? And then I'd like to hear about that and discuss that. And if you do believe it, I'd like to hear about it and discuss it too. How come you do? But anyway, another part of this, if you start thinking about this and contemplating this, you might wonder, well maybe the Buddha's teaching, you know, great Lord Buddha, I mean wonderful Buddha, but maybe his liberation was from a different prison than we're in. Maybe he was in

[33:23]

the prison of a different universe where they had rebirth and stuff like that. Since he thought that's where he was, that's where he had to get liberated from. But we aren't in that prison, we're in a different prison so we don't have to believe in the things he believed in that he was trapped by because he believed in those. We have to find out what we believe in and we have to get free from the universe we believe in that we're living in and we're suffering in. Right? So, do you live in a world where there's no rebirth? And if so, have you actually checked out that world and found out that there isn't any? Or do you live in a world excuse me for saying so that you haven't checked out and really you're living in a world of non-study and that's the prison you're in. You're in the prison of not even looking at the world you're in. Now someone would say that's an example of rebirth in the form of a lazy Zen student. That would be somebody's view of it. But anyway do you live in a world

[34:25]

which you don't have to call rebirth yet but do you live in a world, do you have a birth, a life do you have a life where you don't know what prison you're living in even. You don't even know the address and the name of your prison. Or you don't even know what kind of walls you live, you don't even know what kind of torture they're giving you. Because you live in a world where there's so much drugs that you can withdraw from the torturers. I heard that they're torturing people somewhere but I haven't seen any torture I'm cool. I got my TV and my snack foods. I'm fine, no problem. I weigh 600 pounds. I don't know what these people are talking about. I don't know if they had 600 pounders in Buddha's time. I doubt it. I never heard of one. Did you ever heard of a 600 pounder back in those days? I don't think they had such people. They had elephants but not people. But we have 600 pounders so we have people who can say I don't know what you're talking about.

[35:26]

So I could take some questions or I could go on if those who asked questions still want to. Yes? Well, in response to what you just said I would say I'm living in both worlds at the same time. What are the two worlds? One world is a world of singular existence with an ultimate beginning and an ultimate end which is me. I will die and that's it. So the world of birth and death and no rebirth. That's one version. The other is there is no ultimate beginning and no ultimate end. Let's say one birth and rebirth. I'm thinking one can of course talk about this on the level of truth in this sense. Do you believe in rebirth? As you asked us. And it's more

[36:34]

for some time I've been asking myself what is the truth of this body? What do I find when I look into my body? And sometimes I find this being totally closed and I would die and sometimes I find something that is difficult to put into words but it's more spacious and more open and more undefined, not as defined as life. Does it make any kind of sense? Does it make any kind of sense? What I heard you say was that you feel in some sense that you live in a in a world of where you feel that you've been born and that you will die and that's it. That's one kind of way you can see your situation and also vaguely, somewhat vaguely

[37:37]

you can think in terms of birth and rebirth and that you feel the first story has something to do with a beginning and an end and the second one doesn't have a beginning and an end. What's important to me also is the first story has to do with seeing myself completely different. It's a kind of cosmology where I'm in the center and everything else is outside and around me. Well, but what's harmonious about that? Cosmology, you see, is a picture, a harmonious picture. This is more like what I heard you portray is not a cosmology but is a picture of a certain form of existence which sounds well, you didn't mention it emphatically, it sounds sounds like just samsara except minus

[38:38]

the idea of it being repeated. It doesn't sound like a cosmology though it sounds like a situation without harmony and with some order though some order in the sense of some beginnings and ends. So it sounds like you just described a kind of existence that sounds kind of uncomfortable and kind of unhappy but that has moments of spaciousness in it. Something like that. That's what I thought I heard you say. Is that right? Yeah. And the moments of spaciousness now are those moments of spacing out or are those moments of something some freedom from this tight limited world of independence and beginning and end. Well I would say it's the latter. The second version. What?

[39:38]

It's not spacing out. It's some kind of freedom. But it is, well, spacing out maybe in terms of things, objects are not as fixed and separate. Yeah. So I'm saying again is that spacing out or is that liberation? See one of the things that people do in samsara is they space out around painful things. Space out means they try to push the un-painful things away to get some relief. But then what happens is you know what happens, right? Your arm gets tired and you drop it and it snaps back harder. Right. That's what happens in samsara. That's called spacing out. That's called you get away from me wall. That's called dreaming in the prison that you're in Hawaii or whatever.

[40:40]

That's the way we human beings space out in samsara and that's part of how samsara keeps going is that we buy into samsara. We say samsara is real. Samsara is not real but it's true that it hurts and we in some sense feel that pain and we don't take it as a truth we take it as an option. We think we can mess with it so we start messing with samsara and one of the ways we mess with samsara is to conjure up kind of like a little space in samsara make a little house we get a little spouse and get a little mouse and we get a little TV and we take out an insurance policy and there's a moment there where we feel a little space from the unsatisfactoriness of the setup before we got the house and the spouse and the mouse. We feel a little break and that feels good

[41:41]

that's good, that's nice it's a break from pain it's a space from pain now I'm not saying that's what you had I just wondered which it was liberation means, it doesn't come from that kind of like spacing stuff liberation comes from studying the samsara and studying the samsara is not messing with samsara and not messing with samsara samsara is nirvana this is liberation rather than space or spacing out or running away deeper into the pit moving towards or away from samsara samsara's got you anything you do in relationship to it it's got you that's messing with the nirvana quality of samsara so that's for you to check out mind hair check it out and let me know about whether you're spacing out or whether that's real liberation and if it's real liberation then you can say hey I got the third truth for you here it is, boom

[42:42]

and we can talk about whether you literally mean that whether that's a metaphor for something or whether you know you've got it but it's not really something we can talk about that but please tell me whether you've actually attained nirvana or whether that's just a little distance from this this tightness you know of your life Bernd Fender yes my usual problem with thinking of rebirth is that I'm too literal minded about it that I think that you know John dies and is reborn as a human being or insect or something because that's all I've got and I think very literally and I had a little glimpse out of that a few years ago of listening to you talk about Buddha's what to me was Buddha's mythology vipankara I think it was with this little headlight

[43:42]

shining through and I just started raging how ridiculous that was and about six months later it dawned on me of how limited my view was and that in inconceivable time I mean literally inconceivable time in all directions in the undefinable universe that everything, totally everything is possible why not vipankara as much as Roberta sitting next to me there's absolutely no reason that quite literally anything is possible it's just a mind so incredibly limited and so rebirth what are you doing? now I can see Roberta too the pillar was blocking Roberta but actually things are set up such that I can move and I can still see you and I can see Roberta too it isn't always like that but this is one of these kind of happy moments yes? so I try to think of things like how could that be rebirth there's so many billion more people in the world now than ever before where do they come from?

[44:43]

those kind of stupid literal minded so this is an example he's saying maybe he's being too literal or that stupid literal mindedness but it's possible what I'm saying to you is that I think what we need to do is we need to be literal about this and decide and in the realm of literalness have a discussion about what is a true literalness what is truly literally true and what is literally not true it's not that you're too literal it's that your literalness maybe needs some discussion and we don't discuss these things very much I don't think you're too literal you're very much limited into being limited to your body you're really working on your body that's your thing you're into that really a lot and you admit it that's good but there's problems in that but human beings also

[45:45]

because they suffer because of their limitations are also big time into liberation from limitation we very much want to take care of this body we do, we do, we do and we also want to become liberated from this body this two fold nature sentient beings sentient beings have this quality so I don't think you were too literal I think you were literal just fine just fine literal but there needs to be some discourse about what does it mean being reborn as insect what are we talking about how can that happen or not to what extent what are we talking about how can Buddhism have rebirth at the same time say you never had anything like consciousness existing by itself that's the thing we have to discuss that but there was one other thing that you brought up that I wanted to say about the literalness where was it it's gone

[46:45]

just a second I think it's important I give up it sounds like rebirth is talking about the current existence that's what I just said I said how can a Buddhist how can somebody who is studying Buddhism how do you reconcile dependent co-arising namely that there isn't any skanda existing by itself independent of the other skandas how do you reconcile that interdependence of things and things lacking inherent existence with rebirth

[47:47]

because rebirth does not rebirth is not it's not really the Buddhist teaching it's a basic assumption behind the situation that we're trying to become liberated from rebirth is not the Buddhist teaching exactly it's just let's just recognize what's going on and one of the things that's going on from the early Buddhist teaching is the recognition of rebirth that's not our job to teach that but we can't skip over that either we have to either refute that or accept it and we have to figure out on what level are we refuting it and on what level are we accepting it we have to deal with it unless if we don't deal with it we have to deal with it you cannot understand Buddhism without dealing with where the Buddha Dharma came from you can't just avoid it

[48:47]

you don't have to and then we may have to do something in addition to that of dealing with what our cosmology is or what our situation is on top of that and maybe make a new Buddhism but we need to use the old Buddhism I think to make our new Buddhism so we need to understand where the old Buddhism comes from what it is what level it's been given us and also do we have some new situation that we're trapped in that they weren't trapped in that we need new kinds of truth to liberate us from so there was a whole bunch of hands I think there was Hana and Sarah and Rebecca and Liz I think Liz was next and Humble Sama and the revealed one yes I was just feeling the strangeness of how believing in rebirth and thinking about the future your actions are really motivated if you take account of your karma it's relevant because you're thinking about future rebirths would you say that again please a little bit more slowly would you say

[49:49]

how do we reconcile that reconcile that that the motivation for really understanding and believing in rebirth is in addition to your behavior so how do you reconcile something what's that going with living for the future and living in the present living for the future I see so how do we reconcile studying rebirth or considering rebirth with being present ok get that the way you reconcile it is that you of course being a Zen student practicing presence that's your responsibility so you're practicing that and you come in this room and I start talking about rebirth so you have to listen to that

[50:52]

that's all you got to do is at this point listen to it and if I ask you questions respond to me either by talking or not talking you be Liz I'll be me and I'll keep talking to you about rebirth and you just respond moment by moment you don't have to think of the future at all to talk to me about rebirth you don't have to lean into the future to talk to me about rebirth that's the best way to talk about rebirth that's the way I'm talking to you about rebirth I'm talking about this with no idea of the future and that's my vow I don't know if we'll ever talk about it again I'm just talking about today but again listen to this way I'm talking I'm saying that if you're present and you're studying samsara not leaning into the future not thinking of future lives at all you're just studying what's happening and then you hear about the four noble truths and you hear about the eightfold path the first part of the eightfold path is right view right view is

[51:55]

what's right view about nirvana in two sentences what's right view about it in other words how is belief in rebirth part of right view and also what is a right view about rebirth what's the right view the right view about rebirth will come to one who is upright if you're upright and you hear about rebirth and you keep hearing about that right view will dawn on you regarding rebirth you will develop the same understanding of rebirth that the buddha had similar anyway he has a different historical background but basically you will learn to deal with the issue of rebirth in the present the way the buddha dealt with rebirth in the present in other words you'll understand rebirth and what he understood is for one who is upright in the faith of rebirth there is no more rebirth you're free of rebirth when you understand rebirth but if you avoid rebirth you might get a lot more rebirth

[52:55]

if you avoid rebirth that means you lean back into the past or lean into the future that's rebirth you're in samsara if you do that that's basically today's version of samsara you lean back into the past and lean into the future back and forth past, future, past, future that's samsara that's messing with your life of leaning this way and leaning that way avoiding this, avoiding that that's rebirth right now now if you're present you still have to deal with the potential of rebirth that you have the potential of leaning this way and leaning that way so you have to be upright and study this rebirth thing and if you're a student of the Shakyamuni Buddha you have to understand that you're founder you know was somebody who dealt with this stuff so we have to deal with it he had to deal with it all his friends had to deal with it he came up with a different conclusion from some other people but they all had to deal with it nobody could avoid dealing with it and we can't avoid dealing with certain things in this world

[53:56]

people in this world cannot avoid dealing with certain things if you're going to be happy if you want to be miserable you can avoid everything and the more you avoid the more unhappy you'll get if you want to be happy you've got to open up to what's happening and face it in the present and when we have discussions of rebirth you can't lean into the future if you lean into the future you'll close your study to the rebirth each of you, each of us has to take care of our mode of study all the time that's the main thing the main thing is always take care of your posture always take care of the way you're dealing with what's happening and if you do that rebirth is going to come to you because those who practice this are people who are open to Buddhism and Buddhism will bring you this problem bring you this koan, the rebirth koan so the way you reconcile being present with rebirth is you just be present, that's all you've got to do and rebirth will come to you the issue will come to you and then you study it

[54:57]

and when it comes to you just keep being upright and keep learning about rebirth so I'll say once again right view includes rebirth rebirth is part of right view in two senses, one is it's one of the curricula, it's on the curriculum of Buddhists to deal with rebirth as part of learning about right view right view has various topics on the syllabus for right view rebirth is one of them nirvana is another one of them they're on the course list but another understanding is that right view includes rebirth in that sense that right view includes everything right view deals with everything it deals with and it studies rebirth and right view is the proper way is the true way, is the liberating way to study rebirth it is the way of studying rebirth in the Buddhist language in the earliest text he says there is no more rebirth there is no more of this there's no more of this for me

[55:59]

I'm done with this thing he means samsara which means he means rebirth there isn't anymore in Thich Nhat Hanh's translation it says what does it say? transcend birth and death is that what it says? in his translation of Mindfulness Sutra at the end you don't know that one? you know at the end of one of the at the end of one of the loving kindness at the end of loving kindness it says there's no more rebirth for such a person what's the other translation? the one we chant free from duality yeah free from the duality of birth and death in other words transcending birth and death rather than that there won't be anymore because bodhisattvas keep going back to diving into birth and death but the point is really they have the right attitude towards birth and death they have the right attitude towards rebirth namely rebirth is bodhisattva's playground that's where they come to play

[57:00]

it's the only playground bodhisattvas have they don't have like some alternative playground it's the only one they have poor babies but anyway they don't know any better so they're totally blissed out about playing in samsara so they use rebirth that way so you understand Liz? it's hard but anyway that's it and are you Thich Nhat Hanh? or do you already do your thing? are you going to take a seat? I would like to try but it's maybe going back to Mipham it's ok you can go back to Mipham she'd like that right Mipham? yes I can come because you know rebirth is 10% understanding it's the cultural background of people then it's I thought it's more easier to think dependent co-arising to think the continuity in everything dependent co-arising is universal causation everything falls under that heading but under dependent co-arising there's a subset

[58:01]

called the dependent co-arising of you and me and for that part of it there's this rebirth thing it's a sub example of something that dependently co-arises also other things that don't go through rebirth also dependently co-arise everything dependently co-arises with everything else but there's a subset of living beings who have ideas and concepts of self and therefore go through rebirth it's because of the way we think that we go through rebirth literally if we didn't think that way there's no rebirth when you drop that way of thinking using your life you don't have rebirth anymore you have nirvana and if you don't grow up in a culture that teaches you rebirth then what do you do? then you have some other thing that you think is happening and because of that that drives a cycle if you understand dependent co-arising well great then apply it to when you hear rebirth, apply it to that

[59:04]

apply the teaching of dependent co-arising anytime, anyplace you want to and you'll be able to use it on anything so let's use it on rebirth that would make our conversation about rebirth more sophisticated but you can't skip over using dependent co-arising to understand what's happening doesn't mean you skip over anything that's been presented because you can't understand how to apply it there because the level of discourse is too gross to apply the more subtle technique but yeah let's use dependent co-arising that's really the central teaching of all this that's at the core of everything in Buddhist teaching but that isn't what he taught first because it's harder to teach dependent co-arising first so he taught the Four Noble Truths first in his world that was easier maybe in our world dependent co-arising is easier to teach before the Four Noble Truths so I did last year I did dependent co-arising this year I'm doing what was easier in India but harder here so now as part of that you're dealing with stuff which is harder for you which was easier for Indians, namely rebirth

[60:07]

they had an easy time with that because they sort of grew up feeling that they had to deal with it they didn't know how unless the Buddha taught them we thought, I guess when we started practicing Zen we had no idea we had to deal with this rebirth thing but we have to we have to deal with it and although Zen people don't emphasize it so strongly they deal with it it's just Zen style it's a Zen style totally cool about everything but not overlooking anything not overlooking anything it's all there and so we like that aesthetic so here we are now it's time to pull the skeletons out of the closet was there anything else? let's see, there was Rebecca, right? still is? you're done? it was taken care of?

[61:07]

and then there was and then there was Roberta, was there anybody else besides Rebecca and Roberta? oh, and Ambo-san and then now Cathy has joined I don't know which one of you was first I don't remember and it's close to ten and it's close to ten, okay, thank you I think it's implicit in the remarks you made in answering questions but in the notion of dealing with I can understand that in some sense in order to study Buddhist teaching in order to understand Buddhist teaching we have to understand his view and his teaching about rebirth because it's central to the way he presented the teaching of liberation but I don't think that that entails that we have to if we don't have

[62:13]

a belief a part of our cosmology doesn't include either a belief or disbelief in rebirth, if that just isn't an issue we don't necessarily have to formulate the belief, take on the belief or to exclude it from our cosmology in a sense that would be messing with it, we already have our own samsara we already have our own entrapment, our own prison and I don't think that you mean to say that we have to do a remodel on our prison in order to get liberated from it No, but do we have a prison that's not samsara? Is our prison non-samsaric? In other words, is our prison not a cyclic prison? Is that our position? Is that the prison you live in, that it's not a cyclic prison? So that's my question to you Tell me about the prison you're in and is it actually a non-cyclic prison? Is it one that has actually a beginning and an end? Is that really? And then, if that's

[63:13]

the prison you're in, fine Let's talk about that one then And then inside your prison you have this kind of like message from Mars in the form of Buddhist teaching which is about this your founder of your prison liberation equipment, your founder happens to come from a place where he felt there was samsaric existence maybe the way he actually found out in the end samsaric existence was more like what you think now, who knows? But anyway, you have to deal with it inside of your non-samsaric, if it is a non-samsaric world you have to deal with the fact that your boss your founder, your sponsor and looks like his disciples down for a long time dealt with this issue they didn't necessarily say it was true but they dealt with it, and how did they deal with it? Right? So I think you have to deal with your ancestors, you have to deal with your family your spiritual genetics you have to deal with but you can be in a totally different world from your ancestors and

[64:15]

can they still help you even though you're in a different world? Well, that's always the case in Buddhism each generation is in a different situation and yet they can, they have I guess, been able to use the way their ancestors dealt with their problems which were different to help them, so the way Buddha dealt with his world, maybe will help you deal with your world which is not his world so you don't need to find out what your prison is and then can Buddha's teaching help you in yours, and then part of checking out will be to check out what was his position I think actually, if we can figure out, which is an incredible feat, if we can figure out what actually, if we can actually figure out what was Buddha's position on rebirth we would know Buddha's mind, and then Buddha's mind would blow up the walls of our prison out Before or after enlightenment, I'm a little confused, are they two different views? What? Position on rebirth His position on rebirth after enlightenment is the one we have to understand but we have to know a little bit about the way the world looked to him before

[65:16]

in order to understand what he was liberated from because what he was liberated from was the content of his meditation, his karmic world his world of karma was the content of his non-discriminating wisdom, so we need to know what his karmic world was in order to understand you know, we have this kind of a thing, this kind of a little bugger or something this kind of little created thing that the Buddha was working on, if we want to know how did his wisdom work we need to know what did he apply his wisdom to I think Why not know that? Why not understand that? What's the problem with that? Well, it's hard, it's the only problem It's hard to know what he was actually working on and then how did he get liberated from that That's what we get from Buddha is to see how he became liberated from his situation and he told us enough about his situation so we have a chance of understanding what it was, how he worked with it and how he got liberated then we say, now we got our own little problem now, how can we apply his way of being to our problem his way of studying to our problem

[66:18]

Okay It's becoming quiet

[66:25]

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