Yesterday, our visiting teacher, Aoyama Roshi, started out her talk by saying something like, some people think that if you practice hard your whole life, then maybe you'll get enlightened. Something like that, did she say? She said, but that's actually, something like that's actually kind of not a, not a, not the way she understands things. And that way of understanding is like the way of understanding of the son who got lost, remember him? He thought if he worked hard, things would work out. He didn't necessarily expect to get enlightened, but basically, he thought he could earn a good living if he'd work hard. And, you know, he did work hard, he did earn a good living, but he didn't actually have to work to make a good living, he actually was already extremely wealthy, he just couldn't believe it.

[01:11]

So, as Aoyama Roshi said, you, all of us, are already completely, fully endowed with the Buddha nature. And I read this morning from the, when Buddha woke up from the flower adornment scripture, the Buddha saw all living beings are fully endowed, fully possess the virtue and wisdom of the Buddhas, but because of their attitudes and attachments, they don't understand that, they don't realize that. So, every now and then, almost every time I talk, I should remind us the orientation is not that we're going to practice hard and then we'll be Buddha, but rather, because we're Buddha, we practice hard.

[02:14]

Buddhas are hard-practicing creatures. They're not kind of like loafers. It actually is easy for Buddhas to practice hard, because they're hard-practicing people. It's not like a strain for them to practice hard. But they do. But they don't practice hard to become Buddha, they practice hard because they are Buddha. So, when we teach Zen practice, we teach a practice which is actually kind of hard. But it's not that by doing the hard practice you're going to become a Buddha. It's that by doing the hard practice, you realize what you already are. And I think it's good to mention that because that way, as you do the hard practice, you're not just doing a hard practice plus being, you know, like, I don't know what, you know,

[03:15]

frothing at the mouth with greed, you know, and slashing everybody that you see that might hinder you in your great attainments. No, you're kind of relaxed in your hard work. So, again, I just start with that. Now, since this is the way we are, then now we have a, you know, since you are Buddha, you are the Tathagata, you know, what you are, each of you, is you are suchness. You are suchness. You are suchness come. You are the coming of suchness. That's the kind of thing suchness is. It comes everywhere. It comes all over the place. That's what you are. Okay? But you may not fully realize that, so we have what's called the teaching of suchness. It's for people, it's for such, it's for people who are such, who kind of don't get it.

[04:23]

It's called the teaching of suchness. Let's imagine I wrote that really nicely on the board, teaching of suchness. The teaching of suchness has been intimately conveyed, intimately transmitted by Buddhas and ancestors. You heard that? The teaching of suchness, the teaching of thusness has been intimately conveyed by Buddhas and ancestors. They convey it to people who are that way already so that they can understand what they are. Now you have it, so take care of it. Now the teaching of suchness is basically to teach you how to practice suchness. And so when you start practicing suchness, actually, I guess by hearing about it, and then I guess if you hear about it, considering whether it applies to you at all, and then if it applies to you, you might start training it.

[05:34]

The actual practice of suchness is identical with Buddhahood. So most of us, even though we're Buddhas, have to train, and also we have to train until we can actually do the practice, not do it, but have to realize the practice of suchness. So we have a training in suchness. The teaching of suchness to train us, to show us how to train in suchness so we can realize that we are such. There's this book out which is... I'm making up a real reading list for you on the teaching of suchness. And there's an anthology in there, on the list, and it's called Minding the Mind, by a translation by Thomas Cleary, and he says in the introduction, he talks about five types of concentration, five types of meditation in Buddhism, associated with Buddhism.

[06:59]

And I just might mention the fifth type. The fifth type is the highest type. The fifth type is the practice of suchness. And the fifth type embraces all the other types and uses them whenever it's appropriate. So all the other types of concentration practices, all the other types of meditation practices, all the samadhis come from the practice of suchness in return. But he said one thing that I'd like to pick at a little bit, and that he said that what this highest form of meditation is, it's a practice of penetrating insight by which you arrive at being as it is. And I would say it's how you arrive at being as it has come to be, rather than how it is.

[08:17]

So one little difference I would make in the way I would say it. Okay. Well, one is that it's like, what do you say, like, when Nanyue went to the sixth ancestor, the sixth ancestor says, what is it that thus comes? What is it that such comes? And Nanyue said, if I say it's this, or if I say this is it, I miss the point. If you say it is as it is, you kind of miss the point. And actually what we translate this type of meditation as is pure and clear meditation. Pure and clear. Being as it is. But if it's really pure, it doesn't even get stuck in, it is like this.

[09:23]

So, the first case of the book of Serenity is about this. The first case in the book of Serenity. The World Honored One gets up in the seat, gets up in the seat, ascends the seat, and Manjushri strikes a gavel and said, Clearly observe, the teaching of the king of teaching, the dharma of the sovereign of dharma is thus. The teaching of the dharma sovereign is thus. The teaching of thusness. Nyoho no ze. But, then Manjushri has been criticized for pointing that out. He's saying, see there is the teaching of suchness, see the Buddha, that's the teaching of suchness.

[10:34]

He's a little bit too much pointed at it, but he had to, in order to get things going. He is the Buddhist equivalent of Judas. Well, if Judas hadn't turned Judas in, we wouldn't have Christianity. I don't know why we have. He pointed and he kissed Buddha. Manjushri didn't kiss Buddha on this particular occasion. But anyway, because of Judas turning in Jesus, you have this wonderful thing called the crucifixion and the resurrection, which is important for that. In Buddhism, if the Buddha got up in the seat, you know, there's all the monks running all over the place, you know, Buddha gets up in the seat, there are monks all running all over the place. Manjushri doesn't say anything, Buddha doesn't say anything, just gets up in the seat and gets down and goes.

[11:36]

Maybe a couple of monks said, maybe a couple of guys saw him, you know. But they've got other things to do, right? And it isn't like, oh, the Buddha is getting up in the seat, maybe give a talk, no talk, okay. Manjushri doesn't say anything. And people say, oh, suchness, oh, maybe it's there, maybe they orient, you know. It's a little bit of a compromise to point at it. But he didn't quite go so far as the teaching of the sovereign of Dharma is this. He didn't say this, but still he said thus, which is, you know, better, but still kind of a problem. But anyway, because he did that, people oriented towards Buddha and they said, oh, if that was it, that would be great. So then you could have Buddhism because people saw the Buddha. Without somebody pointing it out, most people would have missed it. Just like Suzuki Roshi walking down the streets of San Francisco, most people missed him.

[12:41]

So they put him in a Zen center and then people went there and said, oh. He was cute, but people, you know, didn't see the whole picture. Until you saw him in complex. It's kind of like, you know, if you just look at a magnet, you might think, oh, a magnet, right? A piece of metal. But when you see the magnet in relationship to iron filings, you say, oh, look at those iron filings. They're moving all over the place. Look at those nails flying across the room. So then you realize, oh, there's a magnet there. But without some kind of thing like that, people don't usually get it. And without Judas pointing it out, the Romans couldn't tell who was who. So with his help, they said, oh, this is the guy. Let's get him and put him up and let him do the thing. So I'm going through my little, my little paper.

[13:44]

Which is at the sort of at the bottom of my reading list, because it's the most recent thing on the reading list. At the top of the reading list, I put the reading list chronologically. At the top of the reading list is Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching. But particularly Shakyamuni Buddha's teaching on training in suchness. That's what I, he had many teachings. Not all of his teachings were training in suchness. He had a variety of teachings. He taught all five types, you know. But I'm choosing his teaching on suchness to offer to you. All right? And that's what I, his teaching and training in suchness, that's what I, you know, talked about last, in our last class, I said. The Buddha said to this monk named Bahiyu. Bahiya. Bahiya. The Buddha said to Bahiya. Bahiya. Oh Bahiya.

[14:50]

Train yourself thus. Train yourself thus. Train yourself thus. That's the Buddha's instruction. And that is the highest instruction. What I just, I don't know if it's the highest instruction, but that's the instruction in the highest form of meditation. That instruction given to the wrong person is just the wrong instruction. Some people don't want the highest meditation. So those people you don't say, train yourself thus. For those people you say, work hard. Stop laughing. Get serious. Or, you're doing great. Here's a dollar. Or, you know, we're going to promote you. You're doing really well. We're going to make the head of this crew. And give you a raise. Well, great. And at this rate, you'll be a Buddha in no time. Well, terrific. Rather than, train yourself thus.

[15:56]

That's how to be a Buddha. Train yourself thus. So for some people, are ready for the highest teaching. I hope you're ready for the highest teaching, because that's what I'm offering you. If you're not, we have substitutes. Substitute teachings, we can do. We'll promote you. We'll give you work to do. We'll, you know, we'll promise you Buddhahood. And, you know, swiftly. You will swiftly be promoted to a Buddha. We have some of those practices too. And if you refuse those, we'll have some slow promotion to Buddha too. But I'm talking about the practice. I'm concentrating on what I consider to be the teaching and the practice of suchness. Right? So Buddha said, train yourself thus. That's it. Train yourself thus. How? Thus. What's that? Thus. Well, how do you do that? Thus.

[16:57]

And so on. And Mark said, you know, he was complaining, because there was all kinds of, you know, he was sitting in the car and it was thus, thus, thus, and you didn't like it, right? Huh? Well, I heard a story about you last night. It was last night? Yeah. You were sitting in the car. Saying, well, it's thus, but so what, you know. I want something, you know. So then Steve started spitting at him. Spit, thus, [...] thus. Could you give me the spit over here instead of over there? I don't want this. I don't want this one. I want that one. I don't want any spit. Could you just yell without spitting? Now I'm going to write something on the board. This is thus. Ha. Ha.

[18:01]

Ha. That's thus. That's thus. It's in Polish. Thus, thus. Thus, thus. That's the instruction. Dádá. [...] Like that, like your life. Every moment. Dádá. [...] That's the practice, that's the instruction. What do you do? Then they go, you know, whatever. You can change it to say, blah, [...] whatever, anyway it's happening, it's happening, it's happening, it's coming to be, this is what to work with, that's the instruction, that's what the Buddha said. Right?

[19:02]

I mean, that's the Buddha's ... Bah-yee-yah, train yourself, dah-dah-dah, tah-tah-tah. In the seen, what you see, in the seen, there will be just the seen. In the heard, there will be just the heard. In the reflected, there will be just the reflected. And in the cognized, there will be just the cognized. This is a little bit of elaboration. Dah-dah-dah-dah. So, what do the dahs come in? The dahs come in colors, light. You see, you see, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, comes in the ears, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, comes in the nose, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, comes in the tongue, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, comes in the seen, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, comes in the mind, dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah, that's the way it comes, all these ways. So somebody said, what's the difference between reflected and cognized, or imagined and cognized?

[20:09]

Well, I was going to work on that and try to explain to you the difference between imagination and cognition. But before I did that, I looked up the Pali for what Kalupahana translated as reflected or imagined. And it's mutta. And the Buddha said, actually, mutta-matta. Mutta-matta. So I looked up mutta, and what mutta, part of what mutta means is reflected, thought, and imagined. But when it appears with the seen, the heard, and the cognized, seen, heard, mutta, cognized, in that four pairs, actually what it stands for is smell, taste, and touch. I didn't know that.

[21:10]

Thanks for asking that question. Mutta-matta means just the seen, just the heard, just the smelled, just the tasted, and just the touched. So like, you sit down in a chair, and before you sit in a chair, you haven't sat in a chair. And you're not into, like, oh, well, I'm going to sit in a chair now. You're not sitting in a chair. You have your feet on the ground. And then, suddenly, da, you get a suchness in the butt, a touch. And it's just, it's just, it's just, just, this mutta, in mutta, which is the Sanskrit of mantra, it's just, it's just a touch.

[22:10]

Just a smell. Just a taste. That's what the Buddha said. Train yourself thus. Well, how? Well, through everything, every kind of, every way that suchness comes to you, it comes to you, it arrives in these six ways, as known things, things you know, and these five dimensions of sensuality. But still, these five senses actually come to you, conceptually. That's the way it comes to you. You don't actually experience the things as they are, you experience them as they come to be for you. So that's what the Buddha said. Train yourself thus. In the scene, there will be just the scene. In the herd, there will be just the herd. In the smell, there will be just the smell. In the taste, there will be just the taste. In the touched, there will be just the touch. In the known, there will be just the known. So I think you can do that, you can try that practice, you can do that during satsang,

[23:13]

all day long, this stuff coming in those ways. See if you can learn how to let things be thus. And the Buddha goes on to say, when for you, in the scene, there is just the scene. And in the herd, there is just the herd, and I elaborate. In the smell, there is just the smell. In the tasted, there is just the tasted. In the touched, there is just the touched. And in the known, or cognized, there is just the cognized. Then you will not identify with it. This practice of training yourself thus, the self drops away, because you no longer identify or dis-identify with what you know, with what you hear, with what you smell, with

[24:14]

what you see. You don't identify with it or dis-identify with it. There's just that. There's not you and that. This little thing happens there, through this practice of mind and objects merge in suchness. There's just, in a sense, the object, but really object and subject merge. And your mind and your life become one suchness, which, in other words, you enter into it. This practice of suchness is non-conceptual, you enter into non-conceptuality, you enter into suchness. So he says, when things are that way for you, when you can taste your gruel tomorrow morning in that way, of just tasting it, taste by taste by taste, and let it just be that.

[25:16]

And then if you know what kind of taste it is, let that what you know it to be just what you know it to be. Let each thing be its suchness, then you will not identify with it. When it's completely just that, you will not identify with it. When you don't identify with it, you will not locate yourself in it. When you do not locate yourself in it, there will be no here or there or in between. And that will be the end of suffering, that's the Buddha's teaching of suchness. I think you can practice that. It's hard, but it's not going to make you a Buddha, it will make you realize that you're Buddha. You're already a Buddha. So, the practice of suchness is the way to actualize that. I don't know how much time we have, but I'm going to talk about all these other teachers

[26:20]

who teach the same teaching, Vasubandhu, Bodhidharma, Dungshan, Tsongsa, Bansai, Dogen, Hejo, Khezan, Daichi, Menzan, Shogaku, so on. I don't know how many of these meditation texts we can get to, but I'll give you a reading list, you can study them. But it is very much, this is the core of Buddhism, I would say, it is the highest form of Buddhism, highest form of Buddhist meditation. It just happens to be Soto Zen. But most Soto Zen people do not practice this. They don't want to, even though it's Dogen's teaching, definitely, and he does not compromise and give much other teachings. Occasionally he seems to, but I don't think so.

[27:20]

But, you know, I don't know him very well, so you might find some places where he teaches other ways, but I haven't seen him. So, you see, it's... So that's what I will try to bring this same teaching out from many texts, and you can read them and find it in yourself. You'll see it all over the place. Yes? So, you said that in that little translation, right? There is an action. It says reflected. Or? It's not exactly a mistranslation. If you look in the dictionary, at the beginning it says, you know, thought, reflected, imagined,

[28:25]

and sensed. So you can translate it as sensed. So it wasn't so far off. And the traditional way that Buddha taught it, for example, you can check, you can find in, for example, Digha Nikaya, you know, Roman numeral 3, 2.32. In that section the Buddha talks, brings up this formula four times, with these various sets of fours, and talks about four types of Aryan speech and non-Aryan speech. So he says, it is, you know, Aryan speech to say what you see, to say what you hear, to say what you sense, and to say what you know. It's not Aryan speech to not say what you see, to not say what you hear, to not say what you sense. So it doesn't, it just says that once, but it's understood actually summarizing those three. So it doesn't literally say those three. According to that formula, though, you can see that's what the Buddha meant, that's the

[29:29]

way he taught it. So it's not exactly a mistranslation. So I can think of it as being heard, sensed, or not. But you understand that sensed means those more subtle senses of smelling, tasting, and touching. What do you think about the teaching of the Buddhist world and how they practice? Some don't want to. Some don't want to practice the teaching, the practice of suchness. What do you mean? What is this teaching? Well, like I said, there's basically five different types of meditation, and some of them want to do other kinds. I mean, by Soto Zen, I mean they live in a Soto Zen temple, they have a Soto Zen membership card, and they're real sincere practitioners, but they say, you know, I don't want to, for example, I don't want to save all sentient beings. Some of them say that. They don't want to. They want to save one, and it just happens to be you-know-who, which is fine.

[30:30]

That's one of the kinds of meditation there are, there's meditation for liberating one person. There is meditation like that. The teaching of suchness is not about liberating one person. One step down from the teaching of suchness is the Bodhisattva meditations, all those Bodhisattva samadhis for liberating all beings, okay? There's all those. The essence of all those, where all those Bodhisattva samadhis come from, is this one teaching. A few years ago, I couldn't remember if I was Abbot yet or not, but anyway, the Zen Center was having an identity crisis and wanted a vision statement, so I made this little mandala, which I can't quite remember the whole thing, but anyway, at the middle of the mandala I wrote, the teaching of suchness, and then I changed it to the practice of suchness. I think it felt okay about that, but then we thought, well, maybe we should change it to Buddha. That's okay. But really, it's like, that's what Buddha is.

[31:32]

And some Soto Zen people do not want to get right in the middle there. They want to be sort of more around the edge, and that's fine. But they're still sort of in the Soto Zen church, you know, like they live there and support it. No, not in general. Well, like yesterday you heard, Akiyama Roshi came, right? Didn't she sound like she was talking like something about what I was talking about? Sound kind of familiar? I did tell her what to say, but she still went along with it. And also, you know, that thing about which Tim caught, where it was translated as using Zazen, remember that part? And Tim said, well, if you start using the function, the great function of Zazen, wouldn't that be a gaining idea? And if there's anything you could use, if there's anything you gain something from, that would be it. If you could harness Zazen, you would be like, you know, that would be it. I mean, you would be in charge of the way things work.

[32:36]

So, I mean, that's the best thing to capitalize on. But it isn't that you use Zazen, you do not use Zazen. You do not use Zazen. That's what she was saying. When Zazen uses you, that's Buddhism. Then Buddhism's functioning. When you are just like, you know, a Zazen vehicle, you are a venue, you are a mode, you are how Zazen works, then Buddhism's happening. Then you do all these little Buddhist things, you know, like reaching out and saving beings and stuff like that, because Zazen's using you. I'd rather not save beings today. Well, too bad, you're going to save us pretty much now. Save them. I'd rather not save them. That's it, you know, you're just a little Zazen puppet. So that was, and all those people said,

[33:42]

No, no, [...] not you, Zazen, not you, Zazen. No, no, we don't use Zazen. Katagiri, she said, one Zazeni said, Don't make Zazen a toy. You know, it's not your toy. Same thing. We don't do it that way. So. A lot of Soto Zen people are interested in the teaching of sadness, but some aren't. And that's okay. I just want to make it clear that some aren't. So you may hear within the Soto group different presentations of different teachings. Any other questions? Yeah. Yeah. So the way I kind of heard at first in the scene, let there be just the scene, is that there is no one seeing. Is that? Don't get into that yet. Just get into letting the scene be the scene.

[34:44]

Just work on that. Don't get into trying to get Jim out of that. Just try to see if you can somehow be with the scene in such a way that there's just the scene. Okay, and then what are you saying about you won't identify yourself with it? When it's like that. When for you, it's like there's just the scene. Like, what do we got here now? Well, we got the scene. Anything else? No. And that's the way it is for you. That's all we got in the scene. And you don't identify with it anymore. Or dis-identify it. Because that's all there is, is the scene. When for you there's just a herd, you know, there's just like the sound of a blown nose. That's all there is for you, when you do not identify or dis-identify with that sound. You say, that wasn't my nose. That wasn't my nose. No. Yes, it was my nose. No. Just the sound of the nose being blown. That's it. When it's like that for you,

[35:46]

then you don't identify or dis-identify with that sound. Or the sight. Or the smell. Or the thought. Then it's just boom, boom, boom, boom. There's not like you identifying. And you don't like locate yourself in what's happening, put yourself outside of it. It just does, does, does, does. And you're carried along by that. Then there's not like there, over there, over here, in between. You know, mind and object merge in realization. It's a self-affirmed Samadhi. So this is the Buddha's instruction about how to realize self-affirmed Samadhi. It's been here a long time ago, by Larkin Young. There's many other ways of talking about it. So you hear it now. If you read and listen, you hear many ways of saying the same thing, of ways to achieve this thing called true objectivity, which is like impossible unless the subject drops away

[36:50]

as a separate entity. This is the first training. It seems for me that the more subtle ones are possibly the first entry because The more subtle, the more subtle what? Ones? Since it smells, tastes, and touches, because The more subtle? Yeah, the more subtle. Or, they're more vague, you might say. More vague, they're not as Yeah. Maybe that's why they're categorized together, just the scents. Because actually smell and taste are real close, aren't they? Like the taste of hamburger is not really, there really isn't such taste as hamburger. But we say the taste of hamburger, but what we mean is

[37:51]

maybe salty taste and the smell of tomato. Or whatever, you know. You can't, there actually is not a taste. We have six tastes, but hamburger is not one of them. So when we say hamburger, we mean usually a taste, a confusing taste, because it's subtle. And then sometimes the touch of the hamburger, usually when we taste hamburger, it's touching too, right? So there's the touch, the taste and the smell all kind of mixed together. So, that is kind of complex sometimes to get all three of those little dots together and let them be. Yeah. So, please say more. I guess, like two of my friends had this response to my talk about how you really kind of, I just appreciate what you said of don't, kind of don't complicate it. Just,

[38:52]

even if you don't know how to do that, just try what you don't know how. Exactly. If you knew how already, then you'd be doing it and then it would be that way for you. Yeah, it's kind of fun. I hope so. Very, very, you know, very down to earth, right? Down to earth. Yeah. Yeah, that's a little bit too much. Just let what you see, that'd be there before, you know, try to see, have the scene there before the identification. And when there's identification, a grab, maybe that's something you know. So then that could be that. But that's different from this visual thing or this auditory thing. Or if you look away, it'd just be auditory. That's not nice. I see you as a grab.

[39:56]

That's not nice. That's not nice. Yeah, like there's not really a color grab, right? But you put colors together to make grab and tracing and stuff like that. And also there's not really a color pain and a color, you know, anger and a color confusion and a color Abraham Lincoln. But you can know these things. You can sense these things, mentally sense them, which is called knowing. And all these things are concepts, but they're different types of concepts. The concept of colors is different from the concept of a person and the concept of judgments and things like that. They're different concepts. When you're aware of them, they're concepts. And we studied 30 verses a while ago, and training in mere concept, or mere conception, is the same training. But I'll get into that later when I talk about Vatsubandhu.

[40:57]

Is there anybody else? Yes, I think... Is the thinking included? Not yet. Not yet. Thinking is... I'll get into that when I start talking about karma. So far, I'm just talking about not thinking so much, but just the thought. Thinking has to do with more the shape of your consciousness. Now, if what you're thinking about... I mean, if the object of your awareness is your thinking, then that could be it. I'm talking about just letting the thought or the known be the known, and not yet studying or analyzing the thinking. The conventional designations, which is going on for all these things.

[42:01]

And one other thing I wanted to say was, I was talking to someone, and she was talking about seeing a color, like seeing yellow. And how she was saying, and you can't get behind the concept of yellow. You know, when you see yellow, you've got that concept, and you can't get behind the concept. And I said, that's right, you can't get behind it. If you get behind the concept, you wouldn't know it. But the point is not to get behind the concept when you see something yellow, to get behind the concept to experience the real yellow. Or to get behind the yellow to experience the reality behind there. That's not the point, the point is to realize just that all you've got there is the concept of yellow, and if you realize that and let it be that, you get liberated. The point is not to get behind the appearance to some reality, the point is to realize that the appearance is nothing but the appearance, and then you get liberated. Once you get liberated you may want to jump over appearance and find out what's going on, because maybe you can even do that.

[43:04]

But those who have been liberated, if they were able to do that, didn't seem to want to talk about it. Like the Buddha wouldn't talk about anything beyond empirical reality, he wouldn't talk about it, because it doesn't help people. So you say, why don't you just sort of let the empirical reality be the empirical reality? Even though it's just empirical reality, and even though it's not ultimate truth, and even though it's just an appearance, and even though it's actually just a concept even, why don't you just let it be that? Because that's what you've got, that's what's happening, work with that, that will liberate you. There's other stuff I don't want to talk about, but we are interested in that, we want to kind of like get to the way things actually are, find out what they actually are, but the Buddha could never find that, so he dropped that and just worked with, how are things actually happening? And the way they are happening is not the way they are happening for you, that's not the way they really are, because the way it's happening for me is not the way it's happening for you, it's not the way, I'm not really working at the way things really

[44:09]

are, I'm working the way things have come to be, it's come to this, has it? That's what I'm working with, and that's what Buddha was going to work with. First of all he tried, like a lot of other people, to find out, well let's get something like real to work with. He never could find it, he gave up, and then he said, well let's just work with this, and he got liberated working with this as it had just come to be. Martha? I'm just going to ask a question about the meaning of the word ignorance. I think that I could consider this to be an ignorance. Uh-huh, right, that's good, yeah. So, anyway, it's come to this, right? We ignore what's really happening, we don't want to look at that, so let's deal with what we are looking at, and if we face that, we can become liberated from our ignorance.

[45:10]

That's all we need, today. Okay, it's almost 8.30, any other questions? Tim? When the pain seems, for me, it's not just the pain seems, maybe there's a color there, and then red comes up, then that's the opportunity for the pain. But before, you know, the confusion comes when you're not satisfied with the colors. So one of the key things you can watch for is that when you see something, you see some color and you hear some sound, notice if there's some unwillingness just to work with it, like that. And often is, if you kind of want more than that, and then you get more than that, but you miss your chance by not appreciating what you've already got.

[46:15]

You will get something more anyway. Things will change and you'll get something else. Like if you look around, you'll still put together faces and stuff, but the question is, do you put these faces together after having rejected the colors which you used to make them? Do you miss the chance of the unknown thing before you make it into a known thing? Do you miss the opportunity of the more, you know, basic impact? So if you see some colors and then you see a face, and then say it's Reb, you know, you can recover at any point and say, OK, now I'm working with Reb. But again, at what point are you going to stop and say, OK, I'm going to work with Reb's face, that's it. And it's just going to let it be that, and nothing more than that. At some point you have to kind of like just let it be thus. Let it just be that. Then you get something else and let that be that. But we have trouble just letting the seenness be the seen.

[47:18]

If you do, then that happens and then you may switch into the known. Oh, that's Reb, that's Bert. But if you don't let the seen be the seen or the heard be the heard, then when you get to the known, you don't let that be either, so then you move on to the next thing. You're always moving forward and never appreciating what's happening right now. You're never appreciating thusness, which means you don't appreciate yourself. Or because you don't appreciate yourself, you don't appreciate this. I mean, thus. So this is a practice, actually, to learn how to appreciate yourself. And not move ahead. This is called, you know, just sitting. Just work with this, just work with this. But you notice that that's hard because we're geared to like, OK, let's move on now. Always, can I have something else? This isn't good enough. Could you, you know, this yellow should have a little bit more green in it. It seems like so much color, so much sound, so much

[48:25]

known, a lot of it, that you have to be attending to each one feels kind of wild. Yeah, but we are attending to each one anyway. It's just that we attend to them and then we resist. Which actually is more work than just attending to it. But the resistance maybe makes us feel like, you know, we've got some power. At least we can resist. This isn't just happening to me. I can fight back with my power. What's it like? Wishing things were different? And then you've got some power. You don't have to just sit here and let stuff happen. You can wish it was different. Anytime. You don't have to let experience just bombard you left and right. You can wish for more or less of it. Anytime you want.

[49:28]

I don't like this. Let's have something different. I wish it were someplace else. I'd rather be doing something different. I wish you looked different. I wish you had a different look on your face. I wish you were taller. I wish I was taller. I wish I was thinner. I wish I was younger. I wish I was better looking. I wish I was healthier. Rather than, I'm sick. [...] I'm healthy. You really just let the sick be the sick, then you will not identify with the sick. Sounds good, huh? And when you don't identify with the sick, you won't locate yourself in the sick. When you don't locate yourself in the sick, you will be not here or there or in between. Don't be the sick! Don't be the sick, we didn't get rid of the sick, we just got liberated from suffering. So then you're liberated from suffering and you're sick. And then because you're liberated, it's kind of irrelevant, because now you're a Zazen slave. Alright, so that's a little class

[50:43]

that we had just now. Did you notice it? Now we have a little session. Will you notice it? Moment by moment, wild moment by moment, see if you can sit there and have like no alternative to the moment, no alternative to this smell, to this touch, to this taste, to this smell, to this sound, to this thought. See if you can do that, because you're going to be there anyway, why not? Check it out. This is your life. Zen student. Of all things. May our intention equally penetrate every being and place. With the true merit of Buddha's

[51:43]

way. Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to give it up. So Gabe, could you read what I wrote? And you know, I was thinking that when you...

[52:29]

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