For this last class, I have two new sets of images for you, for your imagination. And again, as I said over and over, there is a path of freedom, which is using the imagination. And there is a proposal that living beings are kind of in bondage or trapped by their imagination, by the imagination of a world. And in that imaginary world is where suffering occurs, and then teachings come to that world and are rendered into images, and those images can be used to liberate the sentient beings from their imagination.

[01:16]

So we use imagination to liberate. The Buddhas use living beings' imagination to liberate living beings from their imagination. The Buddhas don't, in a sense, have imagination, they just have wisdom. But their wisdom, when it touches sentient beings, gets converted into images, and those images can be used to liberate living beings from their images, which are the only problems living beings have, is their images. Images of various kinds of suffering and distress. And freedom. So I'm going to offer you more images tonight. One I think I've mentioned before is that, well, now I say the body, and then I say the body has three aspects.

[02:20]

An imaginary aspect, an other-dependent aspect, and a perfecter or reality aspect. Three aspects of the body. The imaginary aspect is the way we have learned to imagine our body, and it's what most people know as their body. What people know as their body is an imaginary body. But there is another aspect of the body, which is the way the body is other-dependent, the way it lives in relationship to the whole world. And it doesn't depend on itself, because it actually only comes to life in relationship to the environment.

[03:28]

But the body isn't the environment. It is a sensuous thing that only lives when it's touched and when it responds. And it also only lives when consciousness arises through its interaction with its environment. So the body depends on the mind, which depends on the body, which depends on the environment, which depends on the mind, which depends on the body. So the same thing I said about the body could be said about the mind. The mind also has other-dependent character. You cannot have a mind without a body and an environment. And the environment has other-dependent character too, because you can't have an environment for a living being if you don't have a living being, and you can't have a living being without a consciousness, which depends on the living being's body in relationship to the environment.

[04:33]

So environment, body, and mind work together. They all depend on each other. They all have other-dependent character. And this other-dependent process is our basic life, our basic mind, our basic world, physical world, in the sense of our basic sense data and our basic sense body. None of them can be grasped because they're interdependent. They have no core self. They only have the self that's created in dependence. That's the second aspect. The third aspect is the freedom of the body from the imagination of the body. That the body, this other-dependent body, is actually free of the imaginary body.

[05:35]

And it's freedom from the imaginary body, or the way that the image of the body is never the body, is the purified or real aspect of the body. Okay, those are three aspects of the body. And then another way to say the three aspects of the body is that there is a defiled aspect of the body, a pure aspect of the body, and an aspect which is defiled and pure. One aspect's defiled, one aspect's pure, and another aspect is defiled and pure. The other-dependent aspect of the body is defiled and pure. Why is it defiled and pure? Because it supports defilement and purity. There's no freedom from imagination of the body without the body. There's no purification of the body,

[06:38]

of the defiled images, without the body. So the body has an aspect which is defiled and pure. The body sponsors defilement and it sponsors purification. Purification. And it is purification and it is defilement, both. The reality aspect of the body is not exactly the real body. It's the reality aspect of the body which has three aspects. The body doesn't just have the reality aspect. It has the unreality aspect, too, because it supports all illusion and it supports all wisdom. This, for some of you, is a review, but not all of you have been at all the classes, so that's maybe news to some of you.

[07:39]

Those are images, too, but they're not so poetic. They're more discursive. Now, the poetic image. Two poetic images. Are you ready? I think it's kind of poetic. Once upon a time there was a Zen master who lived in China and his name was Cloud Gate, Yun Nun. And he would teach his students by asking them a question and then answering the question himself. Occasionally they would answer questions, but a lot of his recorded teachings were he asked a question, he gives an answer. Here's an example like that. Actually, this is not an example like that. Here's a different example. In this case, a monk asked him a question, I think. Just a second, I'm going to just check.

[08:49]

Either a monk asked him or he asked himself. Where are all the Buddhas born? And Yun Nun said, Eastern mountains travel or move over the water.

[10:07]

I wrote that up. And if you want a copy of this to remember this teaching, here it is. You can come and receive one at the end of class. Unless you have to leave early, and then you can get it early. Yeah. Eastern mountains travel over the water. Can you remember at all what the question might have been? Where? I think it's all the Buddhas. Where are all the Buddhas born? Eastern mountains travel over the water. Or waters. So this class is, we're meditating on body.

[11:18]

Eastern mountains, Dogen Zenji says, Eastern mountains means all mountains. Not just the eastern ones. Also the western ones. Northern ones and southern ones. The place where the Buddhas are born is where these mountains travel over the waters. So what I'm suggesting to you now is that the mountains are the body. And which aspect of the body do you think it might be? Pretty scary to say answer, huh? It's got a one in three chance. Theoretically, except that some of the answers might be more attractive. Which one do you think it is? Yes. Correct. Correct.

[12:25]

The imaginary mountains travel over the waters. Where they travel over the waters is where the Buddhas are born. Excellent. Now you could say, I'll just say to you, that the top of the mountains, in a sense, when the mountains are traveling over the waters, the top of the mountains, in a sense, are traveling over the waters. But in a way, it's sort of like the bottom of the mountains are really where the mountains are traveling over the waters. The bottom of the mountains, where the mountains meet the water in their travels. That's where the mountains meet the waters in their travels.

[13:27]

That's where the Buddhas are born. And if the mountains are the imaginary aspect of the body, if we're talking about bodies, which we are, then what are the waters? Huh? That's the pure or the reality aspect of the bodies. So where the reality aspect of the body meets the pure aspect of the body, where the reality aspect meets the fantasy aspect, and then they move together there, that's where the Buddhas are born. And what is the place where

[14:30]

they meet? The other dependent body is where they meet. The actual meeting of the defiled and the pure, where they dance together, that's the other dependent body. It's sort of the fundamental body, the basic body, because it supports both defilement and purification. That's where Buddhas are born. Now Buddhas are not necessarily born. Sometimes Buddhas can just hang out in unbornness. They can hang out in purity. They can hang out in freedom from ideas about things. They can be a body that's not dabbling in images of itself. They

[15:32]

can be a body which isn't concerned with not being known. But when Buddhas are born, they're born at the place where there can be defilement and purification. But at that place where they meet, that's where the freedom touches the bondage. That's where Buddhas are born. Okay? Got the image? Okay, now. You don't? Any questions? The mountains. The reality. So the imaginary body is the mountain. And the place where the mountains touch the water, the bottom of the mountains, that place they meet and

[16:36]

interact is the other dependent. They're all the body, but one is where Buddhas are born, and the place where Buddhas are born are in the body, aspect of the body, where defilement and purification, where purity and impurity are inseparable, but not exactly the same. Because one is the absence of the other. One is the freedom from the other. So defilement is free of purity, and purity is free of defilement. Imagination is free of no imagination. So the waters are non-imaginative wisdom. The mountain is imaginative delusion. And the place they meet and dance is imaginative wisdom. So that's the basic image. And now the next

[17:42]

phase of the story is how do we who hang out in the mountains get to the place where the mountains meet the water? Well, again, I align myself with the ancestor A. A. Dogen, who says that the mountains meet the waters at their feet. The mountains meet the water at their feet, and not just at their feet, but at the tips of their toes. At the tips of the feet, which are toes, or the points of the feet, touch the water. This doesn't exclude the peaks of the mountains, but the peaks of the mountains, except when things get really wild, the mountains flip over and then the peaks touch the water. But usually

[18:49]

at first waking of the Buddhas, it's the toes of the mountain that touch the water. And then things can start flipping around, and the waters can fly in the air, and the mountains can tip over and skid around, and so all kinds of things are possible. But for starters, let's get to the toes of the mountain. So sometimes we're at the peak, so you have to go all the way from the peak down to the toes. Sometimes we're halfway up, we go from halfway up down to the toes. Sometimes we're in the foothills, and then we just got to go from the foothills to the toe hills. How do we get to the toes of the mountains? How do we get to the toes of the defiled aspect of the body? How do we get to the toes of our imagination of our body? Can you guess? This is the final exam. If you don't answer

[20:05]

pretty soon, I will. Yes, what? Seven? You can go up to seven, that's good. Seven is good. He's just gone from six to seven? Yeah. Well, actually, you don't have to use all seven. You don't have to use all six. Use five. Mindfulness of the defiled aspect. Presence of the defiled, with the defiled aspect. Devotion to defilement. Mindfulness of defilement will take you to the toes of defilement. Mindfulness, follow mindfulness all the way to the end. Mindfully follow the illusory mountain of your body all the way to the tiptoe of your

[21:06]

body, until you exhaust your body in a compassionate way. Be practice devoted presence with your body all day long, if possible. But in a moment even, go all the way to the end of the moment of delusory body. So we have to be mindful, completely, so mindful that you don't even do the mindfulness. So mindful that you don't gain anything. You're not trying to gain anything. You're just following through, following through on the illusory body. Practice mindfulness of the body without trying to be mindful, even. This is to be completely follow through

[22:10]

on the delusion to the end of the delusion, to where the end of delusion, the tip of delusion, meets the tip of enlightenment, or the tip of reality. The tip of the delusion body meets the tip or the water, the top of the water of reality body. And at that point, Dogen says, the water splashes up at the tips. So we have to be thorough with our delusory body. So I ask you when you're sitting, is this sitting upholding mindfulness? Is this posture like supporting mindfulness? Is this posture an opportunity for mindfulness? Well, one could say, yes, it is. This illusory body, we can be mindful of the illusory body because it appears. So it does support, it does uphold mindfulness, but also mindfulness upholds

[23:19]

the body. So you sit there and you uphold your body with mindfulness and your body upholds mindfulness. They support each other. And I confess to you that I've been noticing lately, and I'm kind of happy to notice and kind of embarrassed to notice, that I've been walking around this house where I live, at Green Gulch, and I've been noticing that sometimes I'm walking and I'm not upholding my body with mindfulness. I don't want to blame the body and say, well, the body's not upholding mindfulness either, but in a way it's true. The way the body is sometimes when it's not upholding mindfulness is the way the body is when mindfulness isn't upholding it. So usually, and that's one of the advantages,

[24:19]

saying so, sorry, one of the advantages of sitting here in class at the beginning, where most of you are upholding your posture with mindfulness during this class, at the beginning most of you seem to be upholding the posture with mindfulness, and mindfulness seems to be upholding the body, and the body seems to be upholding the mindfulness. That's one of the nice things about this, like sitting in a posture which is primarily there to uphold mindfulness and primarily is calling for mindfulness. Would some mindfulness please come here and make this posture? And then once you make this posture, once I make this posture, this posture, it keeps calling for mindfulness. I'm very fortunate that way, that I have a body, which when it's sitting, it calls for mindfulness. If this body slumps like this,

[25:24]

the body says, hey, man, it won't let me stay like this for very long. It says, sit up. And I say, okay. Oh, it's a lot of work, but yeah, you're right. So for many years now, more than 40, I spend quite a bit of time sitting like this, and this body keeps telling me sit up. But when I'm walking around the house sometimes, the body doesn't say, you know, stand up. If I would stop and listen to it, then I would notice that it's asking me to stand up. But sometimes, even though the body is calling me, when it's walking, sometimes I don't hear it calling because the footsteps are so noisy. Like, we got to go from here over there to get that candle. We have to go from here to there to turn the

[26:27]

tea on. And in that hubbub, sometimes I admit I don't hear the body saying, would you please do this mindfully? And then I notice the shape of my body when I'm going to do something, and I'm not hearing, would you do this mindfully, I notice my body is kind of like bent over. Can you believe it? Walking across the room with a bent over body? Because it's like somebody thinks to get this body over here to make some tea, rather than listen to the body asking you to be mindful from here to the tea area. So, I'm telling you that, and I'm telling you that I'm happy that I have noticed that. And many times, even recently, I have said

[27:27]

I really want, I said this is really a good opportunity, just walking around the house is a really good opportunity to actually be mindful, uphold your body in the house, just when you're going from place to place. It's a great opportunity and easy to forget, and therefore easy to stay up in the mountains and be kind of out of touch with where the alternatives are born. Being mindful of the body doesn't immediately put me down to the toes. I might have to walk around the house for quite a few hours to get all the way to the toes of my illusory body. But there is that opportunity right in your own house. But still, in your own house, it's good to actually sit down because the sitting posture

[28:29]

is not so much involved in going someplace to do something. So it's quieter, so you can hear the body saying, you know, it's really weird to be leaning over when you're sitting. But the body doesn't have alarms that go off when you're walking saying, you shouldn't be bending over. But when I'm sitting, I have those alarms. I don't know about you, but I feel really weird if I'm sitting like this. I'm uncomfortable, my body says, do not, what are you, you know, it's got really pretty strong alarms. What if somebody sees me now? This room is full of people, what if somebody turns around and sees me? But walking around my house by myself, it's pretty much usually me that catches me only, and my body does not squawk when I'm not upright. But even when I sit in a chair, my body squawks if

[29:32]

I don't sit upright. So sitting is really nice because I think sitting does say, would you please be mindful? And I don't even have to tell you how to sit. If you're just mindful, you'll figure it out. You'll figure out the posture you want to be in if you pay attention. And then when you figure it out, then try to practice that posture without trying to gain anything or do anything or try anything. So you practice mindfulness in a pure way. Just let mindfulness do the work of upholding the proper posture, and let the proper posture do the work of upholding proper mindfulness, where there won't be any gain, trying or doing. I also was thinking, if we want to find the place where Buddhas are born, we need commitment

[30:46]

and devotion to postures that call for attention. We need commitment and devotion to posture commitment and devotion to attention to the postures, both ways. And then I said, sometimes we say good posture, or you could say auspicious posture. Do you know what auspicious means? It means conducive to success. So you could say, auspicious posture, a posture which is conducive to success of Buddhahood, of Buddha-making, auspicious. You might think the posture is auspicious, but it's not exactly that the posture is auspicious, but it is sort of. The posture which supports mindfulness is auspicious posture. But also, when you treat

[31:50]

your posture with mindfulness, that's auspicious. So the way you treat your posture is auspicious, and the posture which calls for being treated with mindfulness is auspicious, or skillful, or conducive to, or appropriate to freedom from delusion. And here's one more, if you can stand, one more image that I think goes with the first one, and it's also got the water stuff in it. It's the image of a pulpit. So I talked about this at Green Gulch in the Zendo on the morning of December 2nd. On that morning

[32:52]

there was a big storm. A huge tree fell down at the road coming into Green Gulch, so people couldn't come to Sunday lecture very well, so that almost nobody in the Zendo. And as I was anticipating, thinking about going down from this house where I walk around sometimes unmindfully, I was thinking about going down there and I was thinking, well here I am about to go give a sermon on a stormy morning. And I thought, that reminds me of a book I read once. And what is that book? It's called Moby Dick. I said, wasn't there a scene towards the beginning of Moby Dick of a preacher coming into a church and the door of the church flies open and the wind blows in and this guy comes in all wet? Yeah, I think so. So I opened

[33:59]

up, I went and found Moby Dick. The storm was going on, I'm reading Moby Dick and I looked through and I saw a chapter called The Pulpit. And so I opened the chapter called The Pulpit and I read that Ishmael is in this church with a bunch of other sailors on a stormy morning or evening and the door of the church is thrown open and the wind blows in and in comes this guy in black, all wet. And he comes in and this is the well-respected, dignified pastor, Father Maple. And he comes in and he's all wet. He takes off his wet clothes and hangs them up and then he climbs up a ladder to the pulpit. This is a scene where this pulpit, which is quite high, I guess, in the church, instead of having stairs

[35:02]

going up to it, the church was kind of small, and in order to conserve space they had a rope ladder going up to the pulpit. So this preacher climbs up the rope ladder, which has wooden rounds, I guess they're called, suspended by rope. He climbs up the rope ladder to the pulpit and then he pulls the ladder up into the pulpit. And Ishmael is thinking, that's rather unusual, kind of funny that he would pull the ladder up into the pulpit. But he's a highly respected person, he's probably not doing that just to be shocking. He must be doing it for some good reason. Perhaps he's doing it as a symbol that the

[36:04]

pulpit is, as it says, a self-contained stronghold for replenishing the meat and wine of the world. I guess in this case it's the word of God, but in the case of this tradition it's the word of Buddha. It's the Buddhadharma. We go to the pulpit, we pull the ladder in order to find the stronghold, the self-contained stronghold for replenishing the meat and wine of the word images of the Dharma which we're dealing with. To replenish the meat and wine

[37:04]

of the mountain of illusion. And then the other dimension of this is, what is a pulpit? Well, it's an elevated platform for giving a sermon, but the origin of the word pulpit is an elevated platform on the prow of a whaling boat. So the word pulpit is a pulpit. So if you climb up in the pulpit and give a talk, it can be quite intense up there. A lot of people listening on a stormy day, and you're trying to find this place where the word is replenished, where the meaning of these teachings is refreshed. But the origin of that pulpit is to be out on the elevated platform in the front of a whaling boat, and

[38:05]

you're standing out there in the water with a whale out there someplace. And you've got sitting next to you, which is chapter 60 of Moby Dick, which is called the line. The line means the harpoon line. So in these whaling boats, there's one or more sailors on the boat. So let's just say there's one, and this sailor is someplace on the boat, maybe on the pulpit. And he's got this harpoon and he's got this rope. And he throws the harpoon at some point, and if the harpoon goes into the whale, that rope starts moving. And it moves, it doesn't just uncoil in a predictable way, because the boat is going to start moving

[39:15]

in a lot of unpredictable ways, and the rope is going to be moving in unpredictable ways. And the person has to watch that rope, and if you lose track of where that rope is, you're dead. Not always, but probably. So, on the boat there is death, and there is the birth of Buddha. Possible. And you find the birth of Buddha if you are totally following through on where you are. You're

[40:19]

totally following through on being in the present with this body pulpit, or this mind pulpit, or this wooden pulpit. You're totally present, and this rope is whipping by you, and you're totally present with the rope. And you're not trying to get anything. If you try to gain anything, you'll probably slip. If you try anything, you've got to just be present. And if you're present, you'll find the place where Buddhas are born, and you'll become free of ropes, pulpits, boats, water, birth and death. This situation is death or nirvana. If you're on land, that's just hell. That's just being

[41:32]

stuck in the mountain. There's not really any movement, it's just basically mountain, mountain, mountain, squashing your life. It's hard to be on the boat, it's extremely challenging to be on the boat, but that's where our real life is, is on that boat. It's at the tip of the mountains. And we have to be really thorough to be the whole mountain all the way down to the bottom. And again, you're on the boat, you're on the pulpit, which is pretty good, but you're not really on the pulpit until you throw the harpoon and the rope starts moving. If you're just sitting in the boat and the rope's just coiled up in its little package, it seems pretty predictable. It's when it starts moving, and then when it moves,

[42:35]

the whole boat moves, that's when, that's where the Buddhas are born. So how can we find that place? We start just with simple stuff like being mindful of your body, and then be mindful of your body, and then be mindful of your body, and then notice if you're trying to get anything out of it and drop that. And notice if you're trying to be mindful and drop the trying. And notice if you're trying to gain anything. And then notice if you think you're doing the mindfulness and drop all that. So there's just body, mindfulness, and then there's freedom from mindfulness, but freedom from the mountains. Our life is very dramatic. Walking around our house on a sunny, mild day, or a cold

[43:44]

winter storm, whatever day it is, our life is dramatic. And if we're mindful, we enter the drama where things go to realize Buddhahood and freedom from our lives. Or to stay kind of half-involved with the mountains. And then we don't have mountains moving over the waters, we just have mountains of confusion. But if we start taking care of the mountains of confusion of our body, and there's endless versions of confused bodies, which is why mountains are nice images. We have mountainous images of bodies. Fat bodies, skinny bodies, sick bodies, healthy bodies, pretty bodies, ugly bodies, aging bodies, young bodies, growing bodies, shrinking bodies. All this stuff, all these confusions, all can be mindfully upheld.

[44:45]

And the more thoroughly you do it, the less it's boring, and in some sense the scarier it is. But you don't have time for scariness when you're being thorough. So those are the images that I offer you tonight, and that's my offering to start. Is there anything you'd like to say before I move on the waters, over the waters, over the bridge, over the waters? Well, I don't know. But you heard in the Heart Sutra, form is emptiness, emptiness

[46:31]

is form. So the Heart Sutra just says, there's the reality aspect, and there's the illusion aspect. There's the body which you... Well I'm not saying it's not, because the other dependent has the emptiness aspect. But this teaching came along because a lot of people, when they look at the teaching that illusion is insubstantial, they say that's nihilism. A lot of Western philosophers, when they look at the teaching that form, like the images people have of their life, are just insubstantial imagination. So then also the images they have of ethics would be the same.

[47:32]

We have images of ethics that we practice. And again, there could be a mountain which is the image you have of ethics. You follow the mountain of the image of ethics all the way to the bottom and you find the emptiness of ethics, the insubstantiality, the ungraspability of them. You find the way ethics are free of any idea you have of ethics. But without talking about that interaction between the two, the other dependent is the way they interact. There could be a nihilistic understanding. So this teaching, you're saying that the other dependent isn't the other dependent emptiness? Yes. But isn't the other dependent form? Yes. But there's not just form and emptiness. There's their interaction. And their interaction is the way everything depends on things. So Nagarjuna says, I declare that whatever is dependent

[48:34]

core arising is emptiness. He says that, and I would say he says that to protect the teaching of perfect wisdom from being taken nihilistically. But this teaching really gets into it. And he doesn't say, Nagarjuna doesn't say, I say this to protect this teaching from nihilism. But the teaching of the three characteristics says, if you denigrate any of those characters you denigrate all of them. If you denigrate the imaginary characteristic you denigrate the other dependent and you denigrate the ultimate. Of course if you denigrate the ultimate you denigrate the others. But people don't usually want to denigrate the ultimate. They want to denigrate the illusory. And some people also want to denigrate the other dependent

[49:37]

because the other dependent is supporting the illusory. So if you're really enlightened, when you hear about form and emptiness, you don't take that nihilistically. You say, oh, all these forms, all these practices, all these precepts, all these people, they're insubstantial, and that's all the more reason why I'm devoted to liberating them from any kind of hindrance from being... But just in case anybody would misunderstand, again like I say, a lot of Western philosophers and even Eastern philosophers, when they looked at that teaching they said, this is nihilism. Some even say thoroughgoing nihilism. One time a Vietnamese woman, actually a Vietnamese monk who was at Green Gulch, she said to me at lunch one time, she said, what do you call it when somebody has a misunderstanding of

[50:40]

nothing? And I said, that's called nihilism. She was trying to learn English. That's nihilism, when you think that nothing or non-existence and you don't understand it properly. So when Buddha first taught, when the tradition first came up with these perfect wisdom scriptures, it was this great thing, but then it looked like people were misunderstanding it. And so then this next turning came of having the three characteristics, which are implied by the two characteristics of form and emptiness, but it protects the form as emptiness and the emptiness as form teaching of the Heart Sutra from being taken nihilistically. Now still, you can't stop people from being nihilistic, but this helps them not slip into that.

[51:44]

So the basic, our basic life is other dependent, is a dependent co-arising, is that everything about us is dependent on things other than us. Each thing depends on things that aren't itself. But that doesn't stop the imagination of something graspable about this inconceivable process, this unimaginable process, of veils itself, of images. Because of the nature of biological phenomena, the body supports imagination, the body supports imagination, the body supports imagination. Imagination is an aspect of our bodily genius. So we don't denigrate the imaginary. We take care of it to be liberated from it. If we denigrate it, we'll be entrapped

[52:58]

by it. And one way to denigrate it is to call it reality, and it's not. Or one way to denigrate it is to say it has objective existence, which it doesn't. Misunderstanding it is a denigration. But I appreciate your question and I hope you keep looking at this issue. This is a very subtle teaching about our body. When I asked you if this posture upholds mindfulness, what was your response? You didn't say anything out loud. Now you can speak out loud. It's not silent time. Does this posture, does this sitting posture uphold mindfulness? Lots of possible answers. You could say yes, you

[54:03]

could say no, you could say maybe, you could say I don't know, you could say I want it to, you could say hallelujah. What do you say? Sometimes. Sometimes. Sometimes. Always. Is anybody going to say never? What else? I asked you that too. Does mindfulness uphold the posture? Yes. Sometimes. I don't know. But I asked you the question though. The question is out there. The invitation to explore the mountains is out there. Does this mountain uphold mindfulness? Does mindfulness uphold this mountain? There's the question. This question is inviting you to Buddhist wisdom. This question is inviting you to go to the

[55:09]

place at the bottom of those mountains and you can answer I don't know. Your answer is not as important as you keep asking the question. And answers may come. I'm kind of interested in what answers will come, but I'm more interested in the continual questioning. Does this uphold mindfulness? Is this mindfulness authentic? Is this mindfulness pure? Answers can come. Is this mindfulness pure? Answers can come. And if I ask the question and somebody answers then I can ask the question again. Keep their questioning process. That will take you to the toes of the mountain. That will take you out into the pulpit where you're in danger because things are very dynamic, but where you can realize this place. Yes.

[56:13]

Well, you understand it on the boat, right? So if you don't pay attention, you get tripped up on the rope. So if you don't pay attention on the mountain, you'll get hurt. You'll get hurt. Even you'll get killed. You'll die. That's not a permanent condition. What can happen to you if you don't pay attention? What can happen to you? And if you don't pay attention, especially as you get down to the, what I'm talking about is when you get down to the tips of the mountain. What could happen to you? What could happen to you? I just said it. What might happen to you? What might happen to you? What might happen to you? Laurie,

[57:28]

tell them. Tell them. What's even worse than death? Huh? Nihilism. Nihilism might happen to you. And then you might say, well, you name it. You name what a nihilist can think would be okay. Wouldn't that be like, it would be death, but it would be a cruel death, which you might say is no problem, because you're down where things are flying all over the place, and you're not paying clear attention. Is that good enough? Pretty bad. How about the worst thing? Karma doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter what I do. In this situation, I'm beyond cause and effect, right? I mean, I'm where it's at, man. I don't have to worry

[58:38]

about precepts anymore. This happens to people who get down close to the bottom of the mountain and then lose their attention. Up at the top, it's just so kind of dull. You know, it's you know, you've got problems. There's no nihilism up there. You're so far from the ultimate. You know, you're holding back from your life. You know, you're kind of dead in the water, even though you're kind of sort of alive. But when you get down towards the bottom, when the rope's zipping by, you know you have to really pay careful attention, otherwise there can be major setbacks. But we still are encouraged to go down there, and hopefully the skill that gets us there will support us when we get there. Bernard, you had your

[59:39]

hand raised? I know that was a long time ago. Yeah, so the death here, the death here would be, you wouldn't be practicing. You'd be the death of practice, which only happens, that kind of death can happen to somebody that's not started yet. You know, in some sense there's not so much problem with dying. But as you get into it, there continues to be a danger that you'll get distracted or, yeah, distracted, misled. So we're trying to be mindful of our situation of being confused

[60:47]

and misled. Yes? Well, there's this wonderful sutra which is highly revered by people who I highly revere, and that's even revered by people who I don't so highly revere, like me, which says, yes, everybody is going to become Buddha. But even that sutra goes along with, you know, the understanding that to become a Buddha is going to be pretty difficult for us until this world system comes to a conclusion, because the Buddha has already, what do you call it, hogged the Buddha-ship. So we can be bodhisattvas, but because of Shakyamuni Buddha, we can't

[61:52]

be Buddhas because he's already spilled the beans. But the Lotus Sutra says, all you bodhisattvas are going to become Buddhas, and everybody is going to eventually become a bodhisattva. That's what the Lotus Sutra says, and some of, like I said, some of the people who we most value, whose practice was most, I don't know, wonderful and inspiring, they said, Lotus Sutra is number one for me. And Lotus Sutra says, everybody is going to become Buddha. Well actually, that part of this story is that this world system, there will come a time when people will actually forget about the Buddha Dharma. And I was thinking, you know, I was talking to somebody about what might be the conditions for us to forget about

[62:57]

Buddha Dharma, and somebody said, well, materialism might do it in. Materialism might make us forget the Buddha Dharma. You know, I was just amusing, what would it take for all the scriptures to be lost and everybody to forget about all the teachings of all the Buddhas? But the Buddha said that's going to happen. And then there's a chance for another Buddha to come and discover, when there's no sign of Buddha anymore, somebody to come and say, oh look, here's the Dharma, wow, here folks. And that person gets to be the Buddha then. But because the Dharma is already out there, we get to be disciples of Buddha. We get to be Buddha's offspring. The Buddha gives the Dharma, we take the Dharma in, convert it into word images, stand in the pulpit, and then we replenish the vitality of the word images. And that will lead to

[64:04]

Buddhahood, that will make a Buddha, but we can't make a Buddha until Buddhism disappears. Or go somewhere it's not, yeah. Like get on a spaceship, go into a black hole, and then discover Dharma there, and you get to be a Buddha. So in the meantime, does anybody want to be a bodhisattva? And then we have a path there which is being offered. So Lotus Sutra says everybody's going to become a bodhisattva, and some of the people who don't even look like bodhisattvas really are, and all those bodhisattvas are going to become Buddhas, and the Lotus Sutra even tells what their names are going to be. However, it doesn't say, you know, Reb Anderson's going to become a Buddha and his name's going to be blah-blah. It doesn't say that. But, you know, eventually your name would be in the Lotus Sutra, except

[65:07]

that they stopped it, you know, around the 5th century they stopped adding people's names. Otherwise there was a time at which you could get your name added and then your Buddha land would be named and stuff like that. Those were the good old days. When you could, you know, get your name in a scripture that says you're going to be a savior of some world, and your savior name would be such and such. Anything else that you'd like to bring up this evening? Yes. Welcome, strange question.

[66:18]

Did you say you deal with people who end their life? They're dying. Towards the end of their life. Robert's a nurse, right? So he's working with people who seem to be towards the end of their life. You know, I'm kind of just doing it because it looks like they might need help. But I kind of think of them then being on this ladder that we're talking about. And then I think of my own body being on that ladder when I, you know, get in pain and, you know, I've taken a drug to help me, you know, help me. It seems like it's part of being spotted and taking medicine.

[67:34]

Yeah, at the same time, you know, you're in some very good health. So it feels a little, you know, I used to feel kind of automatically I felt like I was probably helping them. And, you know, probably more in the group I went with, like, helping them in their account. I think that, did you say something about the ladder where you're referring to the pulpit? Yes. Yeah. So I think that's a good thing to keep in mind. Look at the person and try your best to assess what their pulpit is. You know, what state are they going to be able to, like, be present the best? What state will they best have a best chance to be present on their pulpit? That's, you know, maybe they can't tell you. And then when he said that, I thought of Suzuki Roshi. And I used to, he was, towards the end of his life, he was having shiatsu treatments

[68:38]

from a Japanese priest who was at Zen Center, and also moxibustion from this priest. And I said to him, I said, could I just sit there while you're getting your treatment? I won't ask you any questions about Dharma. I'll just sit there quietly. I just want to watch and be with you when you're having your treatments. And he said, okay. So when he was having his treatments, I would just be sitting there like this. He'd be lying down, getting massaged, and then moxibustion. And I watched his response to the shiatsu, the way the guy would massage him, and Suzuki Roshi's response. I don't know what he was thinking, but I watched that. And then I watched, he would do these cones, these incense cones, on these spots on his back, and they let him burn down.

[69:41]

And I watched Suzuki Roshi's face, and then he would start to wince a little bit, and then he would pull the cone off at a certain point. He wouldn't let it burn all the way down. He would take it off. So I kind of felt like, well, he was getting this treatment, kind of like maybe giving some kind of medication. And then the person giving the treatment would let it go to a certain point, but that's enough. So you might watch and you feel like, that's enough. If it's any more than that, I think I'm going to let it go. It's going to be too much, too much medication. But maybe this is too little. So what's too much and what's too little? So watch that, to the best of your ability, try to help the person be in the place that's most completely,

[70:43]

as much as you feel that they can be completely there. So for another example, a friend of mine had open heart surgery, and after he had the surgery, he didn't accept much pain medication. So then the doctor said, you're breathing very shallowly, because after open heart surgery, if you breathe deeply, it hurts a lot. But then since he wasn't breathing deeply, his fluids were building up in his lungs. So then the doctor gave him some pain medication, and he could breathe and clear his lungs. So a little bit of pain medication helped him be able to breathe, helped him dare to breathe. So maybe they found just the right amount where he could do his job of breathing,

[71:43]

because it wasn't so painful, but not so much medication that it couldn't do his job. So I think you just have to try to find that with the person, but do it with yourself too. Find your place where you're being as thorough as you can be at being where you're at with your pain, not too much or too little, and help that person find... Because that's sort of the way the Buddha taught at the beginning, right? Not too much or too little. Not too much self-mortification. Don't get too much in that rut, but also don't get too much in making people comfortable. Don't get addicted to sense pleasure and comfort, and don't get addicted to like toughing it out. So we're trying to find that balance place. Sometimes toughing it out is really good. Sometimes being a wimp is really good. Sometimes it's really beneficial to be a wimp.

[72:44]

But to be addicted to sense pleasure, that's the problem. And to be addicted to being tough on yourself is not the point. Every situation is new. Where's the thoroughness? So there's some mindfulness, and just try to be completely thorough. And part of being completely thorough is to find the complete thoroughness. Before you find the complete thoroughness, you probably will be concerned about whether you found the complete thoroughness or not. Before you find the right way, you'll be a little concerned about whether you found the right way. So try to give up knowing that you're doing the right way. Try to do the right way, or practice the right way.

[73:45]

Search for the right way without trying to do it. When you're on the right way, you won't know it, and you won't be trying to know it. But on these serious matters, we kind of want to know. Well, yeah, it's normal. But don't get into that too much. Because that is just another mountain to go all the way to the bottom of. Does that make sense? Very challenging. But one could be really enthusiastic about this challenging work. I hope you are. So this is the body. Same applies to the mind. Same applies to a cup of tea or a chisel. Everything has these three characteristics. Everything should be dealt with thoroughly.

[74:47]

And then everything is an opportunity to realize where the Buddhas are born. Again, thank you for coming tonight for the final class. And I wish you a Happy New Year. And I wish you to find the path that you wish to walk.

[75:10]

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