As you know, the Buddha taught a path, an Eightfold Path, and the first aspect of the Eightfold Path is called Right View. And part of Right View is that there have been realized beings. you can maybe go so far even to say, is there have been Buddhas. And when I thought of this, of saying this to you, I thought, well, this is slightly different maybe from saying, from the Buddha teaching, that there have been Buddhas. He's more saying the path to becoming free is to develop the view that there have been Buddhas. or even that there are Buddhas.

[01:10]

I could say, you know, that there were Buddhas, or that there are Buddhas, but I could also say it maybe like, I've heard that there were Buddhas, that there have been Buddhas. I've heard that there was a Buddha that lived in India 2,500 years ago. rather than me telling you that there was one, because how would I know? But I've heard that there was. But even I could say not even that I've heard that there was, but I imagine that there was. I imagine there was a Buddha. And when I read the teachings which are supposed to be the teachings of this Buddha, I imagine that this person was a really good teacher, because I imagine these are excellent teachings. They seem that way to me. And the more I read them, generally speaking, the more I think, wherever these came from is a good place.

[02:14]

Or if these came from a person, this person was very wise. And then we have this also, we can imagine that there's a lineage of successors to the Buddha, coming down through the centuries, and that in the past there were great ancestors, great disciples of the Buddha, who lived in China. So some of our ancestors of our lineage, of our Dharma lineage here, were these ancient Zen teachers, and that I've heard, or I imagine, that they were, they became so that they were almost only concerned with helping people be free. That's in a sense, yeah, that was really all they cared about.

[03:25]

Another way to say it is all they cared about was Buddha. all the time they're always thinking of Buddha, they're always thinking of enlightenment. But not just enlightenment, but they were thinking of how to help people be enlightened. That's all they cared about. I imagine them that way. And that they ate before and after their great realization, they ate lunch They slept, they sewed their robes, they did some work, they talked to one another. But really they're always thinking of Buddha. They're always thinking of how can we help beings realize the Buddha way. No matter what appeared to them.

[04:27]

They always thought of how can we realize the Buddha way now together. They had realized the ultimate truth and then they let go of the ultimate and joined hands with everybody they met and walked through birth and death with them. They had the ability to accompany people through birth and death. I imagine them having that ability. I've heard they had that ability and I imagine them having the ability to accompany everybody they meet through birth and death. They weren't afraid of going through birth and death with beings. they could stretch their body out in the mouth of the tiger and let go of their hands and feet.

[05:38]

And then I imagine, how could they be so fearless and loving to every being they met, unafraid to enter whatever situation beings were in with them and go wherever they were going to go with them How could they be so flexible and courageous? And I imagine that they could do this because they had become free. Free of the many points of outflows. Free of the many points of leakage around gain and loss. around it is and is not. So I'm considering now with you, for example, a way of seeing.

[06:55]

a way of seeing beings and things, a way of approaching beings and things which is free of the view of gain and loss, which is free of the concern for gain and loss. And someone said to me recently, well, if you were that way, aside from something that randomly happened, why would you do anything? So, you know, if a piece of fruit falls in your hand, if you're sitting near a tree, a fruit tree, and a piece of fruit fell on your hands, you can see how that might happen. But why would you reach for the fruit? Why would you go shopping for the fruit if you didn't want to gain something?

[08:00]

or if you weren't afraid of losing something, like your blood sugar level being high enough. So I appreciate that comment because this person could see that he could hardly imagine acting without concern for gain or loss. Why would anybody do anything if they weren't trying to gain something or lose something? it's good that he could understand that that's the way he probably usually approached every action. Why do anything if I don't gain something? If I wasn't concerned from gain, why would I do anything? If I wasn't afraid of loss, why would I do anything? And just saying that now, I think of, for example, an amoeba, a one-celled organism. There it is, and why would it

[09:06]

over towards something if it didn't want to gain it? Why would it sort of extend itself around a piece of food that seemed to be appropriate for its nutrition? Why would it extend itself if it didn't think it would gain something? Or why would it shrink back from something if it wasn't concerned with being afraid of losing something? So when we look at it, it looks like the amoeba is in the gain and loss. We don't imagine the amoeba just sort of extends itself out to some glob of food with no gaining idea. But, now I think, I imagine, if the amoeba could just extend itself around that food with no gaining idea, that amoeba would be able to accompany beings through birth and death, which in fact amoebas do. The projection of gain and loss is actually not necessary, but we have it there.

[10:22]

And because we have it, because we have that idea of gain and loss, if we use that, everything we do can be like that. You can open the door to the zendo with the idea of gaining something by opening it. You can close it with the idea of gaining something. You can come to meditation with the idea of gaining something. I'm going to get one more period of Zazen registered on my record here at Tassajara. I'm going to get one more chunk of merit on my account in the Buddha Dharma Bank. Or you could say, I better not miss Zazen because then I will lose a little bit of my good reputation at Tassajara. or I will lose keeping the administrator of the meditation hall off my back. You can make everything into gain and loss.

[11:26]

I mean, you can think of everything that way. And every time, so I suggest to you that every time I do something with an idea of gain, that That way of seeing what I'm doing, that way of seeing closes my wisdom eye a little bit or a lot. That way of seeing what I'm doing in terms of gain, with a concern for gain or loss, plants a seed for suffering, plants a seed for suffering and plants a seed for fear of suffering and fear of walking through birth and death with other people. It makes me afraid about my own life and afraid of other people's life. It makes me afraid of my death and afraid of other people's death. By the simple little amoebic activity.

[12:31]

But is it amoebic? I don't know if they actually do imagine that. Maybe they do. But to open the door to the zendo with no gaining idea, without being concerned for gaining even entry to the zendo, to open the door without even being concerned with, like, gaining entry. Just open the door. Maybe never enter. Just open the door. Actually, the door doesn't even open. opening the door without even the idea of gaining the door opening, without any idea of getting into the room, without an idea of gaining your seat, without idea of gaining enlightenment, without the idea of gaining anything. You can open the door that way, and in fact, in fact, every time you open the door, you never do gain anything. You just open the door. You don't open the door and then gain something.

[13:36]

You don't stand on the earth and then gain something. Gain and loss, the view of gain and loss, is an illusion, which our nervous system has concocted to motivate us to run around like non-Buddhas. To make this transition from doing almost everything with a concern for gain and loss to learning how to let go of the gain and loss when we meet people and things, the response I'm getting when I talk to people about this is it seems impossible or just very discouraging because it seems so difficult to so radically change our way of being with things. It is a radical change.

[14:38]

It is a tremendous change. But I don't think it's impossible. I think actually sometimes you already do sometimes. Although you can almost always slip gaining into everything you do, there's a few times when you just by chance miss something. Occasionally something happens and you respond and you do not have time sometimes to think, well, what am I going to get out of this? Sometimes people just say to you, hello, and you say, hello, before you think, no, well, let's see now. And you answer and you don't feel like you gained anything, and so you don't feel like, hey, I gained something, so that was great, I said hello back. And in fact, you didn't gain anything. However, you also didn't plant a seed for suffering and you didn't make yourself more afraid of people.

[15:39]

You actually started to turn the wheel of karma backwards by that simple little thing, which you do sometimes too. If we just make everything like that, we will realize this wonderful ability to walk through birth and death with beings. And by walking through birth and death with beings, while continuing the practice of ending these outflows, of ending these ways of being which plant the seeds for suffering, they also will learn this path, and they will become certain, and they will become free. It is possible.

[17:06]

And we have, you know, tomorrow morning around 7.30 in the student dining room, in the resident dining hall, there may be breakfast served and you're invited to come and have breakfast and you can go in there and there's food available and you can serve yourself food and you can you can actually, it's possible to reach over towards a ladle and touch the ladle without trying to gain anything from it. Just like now, it's possible for me to reach over and touch this glass without seeking any pleasure, without seeking any gratification from touching this glass. Now sometimes, When you reach and touch a glass, you do experience pleasure. You do experience some gratification. It can happen. But to reach for the glass with the concern for getting gratification, even if you do get the gratification, that motivation plants the seeds for suffering.

[18:24]

not just a little suffering, but suffering which becomes repetitive. Because it not only plants the seeds for suffering, but it plants the seeds for touching things that way again. It strengthens the habit. But it is possible, like just now I took my hand away, but I don't think I took my hand away to get anything, and I don't think I did get anything, in a sense, other than my hand being a little distant from the cup. And the hand can go back to the cup and away from the cup and back to the cup. But I'm not doing that to sort of like make my life work. I'm not doing that to bring myself happiness. I don't even know how that happened, you know, that my hand, not the other hand moved. I switched, I switched hands and the other one moved away. I don't know where that came from. But I could be up here moving my hands, and every time I move my hand, I could be thinking of gaining something from it.

[19:30]

And I'm saying to you, once again, some people say, well, why would you even move your hand if you didn't think you were going to gain something from it? That people can barely imagine that you would do anything if you weren't going to get a gain, if you weren't trying to get a gain. Now, am I trying to get rid of this cup now? Is it getting heavy? I have to be careful here. How am I going to get rid of this cup? I don't want to hold it forever. Yikes. A little bit of gaining idea there. Over here. And then stick the ladle in the, what's for breakfast tomorrow? Is it oatmeal?

[20:32]

Huh? Polenta. So it's not going to be oatmeal. That's what I wanted, but it's not going to be oatmeal. Polenta. So you put the spook in the polenta. Well, why would you do that if you weren't trying to gain the polenta? I don't know. The Buddha is coming to breakfast at Tassajara. She walks up to the ladle, sticks it in the polenta. What's the Buddha doing there? I don't know. I think the Buddha is putting the polenta in to save all sentient beings. I think the Buddha is putting this ladle into the lentil to help the Tassajara residents and guests. I think that's why the Buddha's... Because the Buddha's thinking, what can I do to help people? I think I'll go to breakfast. Because I know they want me to eat. Occasionally. Especially in the morning. Before noon.

[21:36]

So I'm going to go and eat. Because I think that might help people. For them to see me eat. And not only that, but to watch me eat with no gaining idea. So I'm going to go see now. Just going to go have my polenta. Scoop it up there. There we go. Got a bowl of polenta. And now I guess I can eat it. But am I eating this polenta to get some gratification? Or am I eating the polenta because it's helpful to people if I eat because they want me to live a little longer? Well, I think I could just eat the polenta, just to eat the polenta. And I think that would be helpful to people. If somebody at Tassajara, at least one person, eats the polenta, period. Now, maybe everybody else is eating the polenta to get some gratification, but one person can show eating the polenta just to eat the polenta. But maybe you all could.

[22:42]

And you might say, yeah, well, it's easy with polenta. Especially, you know, what about putting gomasio on it? Is that for gratification? Yikes! You may have to give up gomasio. Some of you maybe don't know what gomasio is. It's delicious. It's roasted sesame seeds ground together with salt, and you put it on polenta. Polenta suddenly becomes delicious. So now that we don't just have polenta, we have deliciously seasoned polenta. Now there's a possibility this would be quite pleasurable. But why would you put the gomasio on just to make it more pleasant if you're not trying to gain gratification from eating the polenta? Well, that's a good question. Maybe I'll try it tomorrow without gomasio. Yikes. I'd rather not go to breakfast than go there and not have gomasio on the polenta. Well, probably they're going to have buttermilk and bananas with it, I suppose.

[23:45]

Is that right? Tofu smoothie. Is there no bananas in the smoothie? Huh? There's bananas in the smoothie? OK. I see that you don't add anything to. It's delicious already, right? So you might have to, in order to identify whether you're actually eating the polenta to get some pleasure, or whether you're eating the polenta just to help all those ancient beings, you might occasionally, like, just don't put an ego macho on, just to see, you know, what that's like. And they say, okay, just eat the polenta. Okay, all right. I didn't get any gratification. And I wasn't trying to get any, and that was, like, fine. I just ate the polenta. Great. And again, no big deal. Except... One small point was, I think maybe that was the Buddha way that just happened there.

[24:46]

I think maybe that was like Zen that just happened. I just ate polenta the Zen way. And I just, I think maybe all the Buddhist ancestors are like spinning around on their Zappos right now, really happy that somebody at Tassajara just ate their polenta, period. Maybe. Yeah. And it was no big kick for me. But I did actually eat that stuff without trying to get a kick. And it's OK that I didn't get a kick. And I'm willing to do that at lunchtime too now, maybe. Although this could get boring. Meal after meal just to eat the meal without like, what can I do to jack myself up at this meal? How can I get something like a little treat out of this one? What pleasure, what gain can I get in addition to just maintaining my body so I can continue to practice? I can cook up some interesting little dishes here. I can do something to make a gain out of this.

[25:52]

I can see it that way. But even if you don't get the gain, The main thing is that you want to get a gain. And if you don't get the gain, you still get credit for planting the seeds for suffering because you wanted to get something. The main thing is you're trying to get yourself gratification. That's the main thing that gets you credit in Sufferingville. If you're not trying to get gratification and you don't get it, you start to end these outflows. If you do get gratification and you weren't trying to get it, it doesn't matter. It's okay if you experience pleasure. That's not the problem. The problem is, is that what you're doing when you meet people? Are you meeting people to get pleasure from this meeting? Is that what you're trying to do? And the answer is, often, yes, that's what I'm trying to do, all right. When you look at somebody, when you're walking around Tassara and you sort of see somebody and you think, maybe if I looked at them, I think I saw something over there.

[27:04]

I think I'll take another look because that looks very promising, this particular. Oh, yeah, wow, that was fun. Oh, there's another one. And then you see somebody else. That doesn't look too promising in that particular person. I think I'll look away because I might lose my, I might not feel so comfortable if I look at that person. So you kind of like, your head's like, you know, turning this way and that way in the field of vision, avoiding the people that you think are a little repulsive and looking at the ones that you think are kind of attractive. This is the head swirling back and forth. This is called the emotional leakage. Plant seeds of, plant seeds of suffering, plant seeds of suffering, plant seeds of suffering, plant seeds of suffering. Why would you look at somebody if you didn't think you're going to get kicked out of it? Well, you don't usually go that far, but still.

[28:07]

How about just looking at somebody with no concern for gain or loss, no concern for gratification? How about learning how to do that? And when we learn how to do that, our wisdom eyes start to open inside of our regular eyes, and you start to see reality. And then you start to see how to be with people and walk through birth and death with them. But it's a big change. big change. And people and things do offer, what do you call it, they offer the conditions for imagining gain and loss, they do. People look like, sometimes like, you know, they look like, boy, you could really gain something with this person, or you could really lose something with this person, or you could really gain something with this food, or really lose something with this food.

[29:23]

Things do sort of offer the conditions for such imagination. Gain and loss are illusions. It's not true that we gain and lose things, but we see that way. And then when we approach things from that point of view, we close our wisdom eye more. When we do not approach things that way, we more affirm, we more realize that that appearance of gain and loss is an illusion. So let's see, this is supposed to be a 40-minute talk, and it is now, it's supposed to go to 9.20, is that right? It's getting close to 9.20. According to my watch, only four more minutes.

[30:29]

And I apologize for a change in plans. I thought that I would be picking my grandson and his mother up at the airport at 8.40, but it's going to be at 7.40. And there's, I understand, heavy traffic on Friday afternoon in the East Bay, which I'm going to Oakland Airport. So I think I had to leave earlier than I thought I had to leave, which means I won't be able to do that class tomorrow afternoon that I thought I was going to be able to do. I'm sorry. I apologize for that. Because during that class we could discuss this obnoxious teaching and And now we don't have much time, so I'm sorry that I told you this terrible, obnoxious teaching about ending outflows, but maybe you can practice it anyway, even though I didn't have time to explain it very well.

[32:09]

It's kind of simple in a way, it's just extremely radical. And it's, you know, it's just completely changing our usual way of doing things. But again, sometimes you're already doing this practice. You can maybe discover you're already doing it a little bit. Sometimes you, when you hear the bell for Zazen, you get up to go before you start calculating whether or not you're going to get something out of going. You ever had it happen to you? That you heard the bell ring and before you knew it you were like moving to go before you saw it. Well, let's see now. I could get a little bit more done here before I... Sometimes you do do that, so just if you can expand that enlightenment that you sometimes have, that's basically it. Now there's one minute left. Do you have any questions? Yes?

[33:22]

Well, it depends. I, myself, When I brought it up, I thought, for me, I got to admit that usually when I put gomasio on the polenta, the reason why I'm doing that is to get the pleasure of tasting the gomasio on the polenta. That's my emotion. That's my way of looking at it. I'm trying to get gratification over and above the polenta taste by putting this gomasio taste on it. which not only adds the gomasio taste, but somehow brings out the essence and deliciousness of polenta. But without the gomasio, the polenta tastes pretty bland. So for me, I think, for me, putting gomasio on polenta tomorrow morning would probably be too advanced. But some people don't like gomasio, so they might be putting the gomasio on just to get a little oil in their diet, which they don't consider a gain. They just think of it as medicinal. So those people can put the gomasio on.

[34:34]

But for me, who loves gomasio so much, I probably, it may be beyond my abilities to do that. But it may be that if I could eat polenta without gomasio a few hundred times and just really be at ease with that, by that time I probably would be enlightened enough to have gomasio on the polenta and say, But I might say, I don't want komashio anymore, except as a side dish. If I went in for breakfast and komashio was the third dish, I'd just eat the komashio. But still, if I was like, oh, now I can have this great komashio, it's going to be... It's going to be so delicious. But still, when I reach for that gomasio, am I reaching for it because it's time to eat gomasio or because it's time for me to try to get some pleasure? Sometimes it's time to eat gomasio.

[35:36]

People come up to you and say, open up, open up, gomasio time. Open up. Here comes the gomasio. It's time. But even though it's coming, you can still say, oh boy, I'm going to get something out of this. This is going to be a game for me, and they're forcing me, so I'm not really even responsible. No, you are. You're responsible for thinking, game. This is a game. It's not. It's not. It's Camacho. It's Camacho. and this person isn't a gain, and this person isn't a gain, and this person isn't a loss. This is Sonia and Steve and Sarah. They're not gain and loss. Gain and loss is not what people are. People are not gains and losses. Food's not gain and loss. But we see it that way, and that way of seeing it, in some cases, is too advanced. Because some people will look at, well, this person is just, I can't not see this person as a gain. I can't see this person but a loss.

[36:37]

Okay. Okay. So that's too much for you. And maybe you can't avoid the person, so then you fall into that pattern. But some things you can avoid that, you know, in a sense, they're too advanced for you to do without getting into gain. Some people can, for example, can drink a glass of delicious liquid And just drink it. Other people are drinking it to gain something, to change their state of mind, to wash away their pain, to lose their distress. In one case, it's not a problem. The other case, it is. In one case, it isn't good for their health. The other case, it's okay. So we have to be aware of what the things are that are not appropriate for us because we slip into this gaining thing. And then once we get into that, then we want to gain again, and we want to gain again.

[37:41]

More and more gamashiro. So it's a difficult practice to make this transition, but at the same time it's not so difficult to notice the habit. It's just difficult to retrain ourselves into Buddhahood. Well, if that's the only question, I guess I'll just sing a song and go. Oh, yes? I thought, I was sitting here thinking maybe, you know, maybe having the aspiration to join hands with all beings and walk together through birth and death could be a great gain.

[38:45]

Yeah, you could make that into a gain too, definitely. But if you do approach this great attainment of the ancestors with a gaining idea, then you won't be able to do it because they gave up making that into a gain too. They actually became free of making the Buddha way into a gaining thing. But we can make the Buddha way, which is the way of becoming free of gain, we can approach it. We can't make it into a gaining thing because it's not a gaining thing and it's not a losing thing. The Buddha way isn't gaining and isn't losing. It is just the way that things really are. But if we make it into gain and loss, then we alienate ourselves from it. Just like if our relationship with people is just our relationship with people. We have a true relationship with everybody we meet. Everybody we meet, we have a true relationship. It's sitting there right in our face. But when we bring gain and loss into it, then we alienate ourselves from the true relationship, which is right now happening.

[39:51]

We miss it. And even if you met Buddha, if a great sage came into your life, there it would be. My God, I got this great sage in my life. It's so great. And now I... Try to get the relationship. Try to get your teacher. Try to get close. Try to avoid losing your teacher now that you finally found your great teacher. After you got your teacher, but then you blew it. Flowers fall in our attachment. Weeds grow and we don't like them. But if you don't attach to these wonderful relationships you have, they flourish. And if you don't try to avoid the difficult relationships, the difficulties drop away. But of course, we tend to try to avoid the difficulties and go towards the nice stuff.

[40:55]

That's our way. And no matter what it is, even if it's the most wonderful practice, you can put it, you can separate yourself from it by this gain and loss thing. Or, put another way, if you think the Buddha or the wonderful practice is separate, then you want to gain it. So either give up gain and loss and realize there's no separation, or give up separation and realize there's no gain and loss. Either way. Yes? You don't want to eat it? Yeah, because I'll go up to that gamassia ball and I'll start thinking about, oh no, I'll start thinking about whether he has the gamassia or not. Okay, I'll take the gamassia ball away. So you can have your polenta.

[41:58]

That will help you? You'll be still thinking of gaining a gumashio taste? OK, I'll do a lobotomy on you. Now, go ahead. Plant the seeds of suffering. It's a free country.

[42:21]

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