for some time now, I've been bringing up the expression, the middle way. In the first teaching that Buddha Shakyamuni gave, by the way, yesterday was Buddha's birthday, the Shakyamuni Buddha's birthday, the first teaching that he gave in terms of a formal discourse or a formal actually concourse with his friends he talked about the middle way and he said to his his friends he said there's two There's two things, maybe, that someone who has gone forth in the spiritual life should avoid.

[01:15]

Those two things are devotion to addiction, to sense pleasures, and devotion to self-mortification, He recommended that those who would follow the way of enlightenment give up these devotions to addiction to sense pleasure and self-mortification. basically give up these two modes of distracting ourselves from life. Basically he was saying, don't distract yourself from your life. But those are the two main ways that we usually use to distract ourselves from our life, our precious life.

[02:25]

Let's get away from it as soon as possible by one of these extremes. Buddha said, please don't. And this is called the middle way. And he realized this way, and this is peaceful this way, and calm, and freedom, and even nirvana, And then later he taught the middle way and many other ways, but the other main way he taught it was something like this. There's two views, or two extreme views, that we should not grasp. One view is the view of existence. The other view is the view of non-existence.

[03:30]

The view of existence means not just seeing something exist, but seeing that it exists and believing that it really exists, just like it appears. The other extreme would be that you see something and you believe it does not exist. really does not exist, completely an illusion and nothing there at all. Those are two extremes which you may be surprised to hear almost all human beings are involved with all day long. That these two basic extremes are views that we have, that we actually see things this way, see and believe that things are this way, that everything exists or that everything does not exist.

[04:34]

Everything does not exist is different from nothing exists. That would be a more unusual view, that there is nothing. But it's rather that what you see doesn't exist at all. And the other is that what you see really does exist like it appears. The middle way is to avoid these views. Or, put it another way, it's to relinquish them, let go of them, because they still arise all the time. You know? I mean... They're on the bulletin boards all over town. They're on the radio. They're on TV. They're in the newspaper. Their magazines are basically saying, it exists, it doesn't exist, it exists, doesn't exist. And your mind is constantly creating these impressions, these views, these appearances and beliefs in them are going on all the time.

[05:40]

The middle way is to not grasp them. The potential, the opportunity for self-mortification and the opportunity for addiction to sense pleasure are always there, or almost always there. Anyway, often there. When you're in great pain, you may have trouble finding some opportunity to indulge in the sense pleasure. But looking for sense pleasure when you're in pain, even if you don't have sense pleasure, that's part of the addiction. So I guess, actually, you can always do it. You might not be able to find any success at indulgence in sense pleasure, I take it back. You can always find success in indulgence in sense pleasure because even when you're uncomfortable, just trying to find something pleasant is indulgence in sense pleasure. Being unsuccessful in finding some sense pleasure to indulge in, but trying hard to find one, doing your best to look for one, being totally dedicated to one and not paying attention to what's happening, this is indulgence in sense pleasure.

[06:54]

So you can always do it. Congratulations. You can also, instead of doing that, always look for some way to put yourself down, to call yourself worthless or bad, or even to try to look for something to do to hurt yourself. You can always do that. Even though you might be, I don't know what, strapped down in a psych ward so you can't move your arms or legs, you can always think something bad about yourself. And even if you're on heavy sedatives, you still can probably think some bad things about yourself, if you can think anything. I guess if you get heavy enough sedation, you can't even think of any way to think badly of yourself or anybody else. So that would be a pretty successful way to check out, too. Basically, these are ways of checking out. It's the middle way. The Buddhist middle way is fundamentally a way of checking in to life.

[07:58]

And it may seem like at first you check into your life, but the more thoroughly you check into your life, the more you find out that you're not checking into just your life, you're checking into all life. That's the middle way. But again, in order to check into all life, which is actually each of our life, I don't know if that was proper English, but anyway, was it? No. In order to do that, we have to relinquish, in order to fully do it, we have to relinquish all our views. Relinquishing some of them is nice warm-up, but the actual entry into life is realized through relinquishing all views.

[09:02]

So in the middle way is relinquishing all views. That's what the Buddha found. The Buddha found a path of relinquishing, of letting go of all the things he saw and believed in. This is also sometimes called emptiness. This relinquishment of all views is also sometimes called emptiness. And emptiness means that everything, all phenomena, lack inherent existence. In other words, that there's nothing. There's no body, no person, and no thing that exists independent of other things. Nowadays, as of old, people sometimes find the word emptiness or lack of inherent existence somewhat shocking.

[10:08]

My wife always said, don't use that word emptiness. I hate that. Use some other words. So I've been using for many years, I've been using interdependence. She liked that better. Interdependence, because All things are interdependent. Nothing. There's nothing. There's no color, no experience of color. There's no ear. There's no nose. There's no glasses. There's no earlobes. There's no watches. There's no people. There's nothing that exists independent of other things. Nothing. That fact, that fact that nothing exists on its own is the fact that everything lacks independence, lacks inherent existence. In other words, that's emptiness. But I wasn't allowed to say that to my wife for a long time. So I would say everything's interdependent. I wouldn't even say that, but, you know, if cornered, Then I would say, yeah, everything's interdependent.

[11:13]

That's what it is. Recently she told me, you know, I don't mind emptiness anymore. You can say emptiness. The teaching of emptiness is very tricky because sometimes people turn emptiness into the extreme view that I mentioned earlier. Can you know which extreme view that might be turned into? What is it? Huh? Nothing, everything does not exist. It's not the same as nothing exists. They turn it into everything does not exist and that gets turned into nothing. That's what emptiness sometimes gets turned into. So I'm not going to talk much about emptiness today because it's dangerous. I don't want any of you to go away with the extreme view that nothing, that everything does not exist. But I just might mention to you that if anybody here heard that word emptiness, and if you started crying when you heard it, if tears came to your eyes, or if all your hairs stood up and saluted and you got goosebumps, then maybe you should come back later for instruction on emptiness.

[12:19]

But if it was just kind of an ordinary, obnoxious word, just forget I said it. We'll go back now to the middle way and interdependence. I just want you to know that the middle way is emptiness. In other words, there is no such thing all by itself called the middle way. There's no thing that's the middle way. There's no thing which is Buddha or Buddhist practice. There's no thing like that by itself. Buddhist practice is not a thing by itself. A Buddhist practice depends on other things. It's not a substantially existent independent thing. It's an interdependent thing. And to enter into the Buddha's way, the middle way, we have to relinquish all of our views. Up here in the center of the room is Shakyamuni Buddha, the smaller statue, and the huge statue

[13:27]

is Manjushri Bodhisattva. Manjushri Bodhisattva is, in a sense, the mother of the Buddha and the father of the Buddha and the grandmother of the Buddha and the grandfather of the Buddha and also is the Buddha's child. Manjushri shows, you know, expresses a certain aspect of Buddha And what Manjushri expresses, we sometimes say is wisdom, but today I would like to emphasize that what Manjushri represents is the relinquishment of all views. Manjushri represents the middle way. The Buddha is not just the middle way. But an important part of the Buddha is the practice of the middle way, the relinquishment of all views. Manjushri is a Sanskrit word, I think, and it means pleasant splendor.

[14:36]

Pleasant splendor. When the Chinese transliterated Manjushri's name into Chinese. Transliterated means they use Chinese characters to try to make a sound similar to the Sanskrit or Sanskrit sound or any foreign word that they try to transliterate. They use their own characters which have their own sound to make a sound similar to the foreign word. But sometimes they just take any old word that sounds pretty good and use it to make a sound like the original in the foreign language. But in Manjushri's case, they chose two characters which are not just make the right sound, but they also tell us something about Manjushri. The characters they used are pronounced Wanju. And the first character, Wan,

[15:44]

means a literature. But literature in China is not something that somebody wrote today necessarily, but mostly what's been written in the ancient times. It's a classic literature. It's all the precedents of our culture and our evolution. And jiu means to kill. or to exterminate. This Manjushri has a nice little attribute in his hand, which is kind of like a mushroom on the end of a stick, but oftentimes Manjushri has a sword. And the sword can be interpreted various ways, but today I'm interpreting the sword as a sword, it kills tradition, it kills habitual ways, it kills all your views.

[16:47]

It cuts through and eliminates attachment to views. This is the basic principle that Manjushri represents, the principle of cutting through views. Not other people's views, our views, our own views. This is a radical principle. And again, in Chinese, a Zen master named Wang Bo said, stands for principle. And the word for principle is a character which means, it means principle, but it also means the lines in jade.

[17:51]

You know, if you look at a jade stone, it has lines running through it. And the lines in the jade are kind of the principle of that piece of that stone. And if you cut the stone, you relate to those lines. They're the principle of it. And the principle of the Middle Way is relinquishment, is non-attachment to views. Manjushri represents that. By relinquishing, by letting go of all our views, you enter the middle way. Now, we don't have a statue in this room of the other attendant to Shakyamuni. Oftentimes, Shakyamuni Buddha has two attendants, and one of the attendants is Manjushri, the great Manjushri Bodhisattva.

[18:58]

The other attendant that often is paired with Manjushri is called in Sanskrit Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. And Samantabhadra means something like universal goodness or infinite, unbounded goodness. But again, in Chinese, when they translated it... No, that's wrong. I was going to say something which is wrong, so I'm not going to say it. When they translated, they translated it, not, they didn't, they translated it, they didn't transliterate it. They translated it into infinite or general or universal goodness. And the Zen master Wang Bo said that Samantabhadra stands for the practice. The practice. So those two together bring out

[20:03]

show us something about the Buddha. On one side they show us what the Buddha is. The Buddha is non-attachment. The Buddha is relinquishing all attachments to your views. That's the middle way side of the Buddha. Not grasping any views, particularly the extreme ones. Turns out if you don't grasp the extreme ones, the other ones all fall away. So it's very important to find the extreme ones so you can check to see if you've relinquished them. And this is hard work, which I'll talk about later. The work of finding... these views so that you can check to see if you happen to be gripping them or if you have let them go.

[21:09]

But that's one part of Buddha, is letting go of all views and entering the middle way, thus basically naked, nothing in your hands, nothing in your mind, or take it away. Because if I say nothing in your mind, people think, oh, Zens have nothing in your mind. Forget I said that. Did you forget it? I pretty much forgot it. Have you? It is that you have nothing in your hands, but it's not that you have nothing in your mind. Your mind's jam-packed full of stuff, some excellent stuff. Probably some of you have got some really good stuff in there. I know. I've checked. It's not that you have nothing in your mind. It's that you have nothing in your mind's hands. Your mind is not grasping stuff in there. Your mind is letting all that stuff be there without collecting the good stuff over here and getting the bad stuff over there and trying to organize and control this multifarious activity.

[22:12]

Not messing around, just letting the mind be without grasping anything. Okay? That's part of Buddha. A person who doesn't have any attachments to anything in their mind is a Buddha, pretty much. But there's another aspect of Buddha, which is the samantabhadra side. Samantabhadra stands for the practice. So after you enter the middle way, by letting go of all your attachments, then you practice. And how do you practice in the middle way that you've entered by letting go of all your treasured views? You just join hands, these empty hands, you just now put something in them, and what you join hands with is all living beings. And you have no views about which hands you should grasp.

[23:16]

You have no views. So when a little hand comes into your paw, you grab it. Just because it touches your hand, you're like a coral. You go . Coral like that, they eat the plankton. You embrace all beings, that's the practice. and you have no view about how to embrace all beings. You just hold their hands and walk through birth and death with them.

[24:22]

No matter what happens to them, if they're happy or depressed, if they're healthy or sick, if they're rich or they're poor, You're with them. You embrace them. You enter into the space between you and the other, and you live there. In actual, in practical life, most of us will not completely relinquish all views and then enter into the practice together with all beings.

[25:52]

We will notice right now that we have not yet relinquished all views, and we are already practicing with some beings. We are already holding hands with some beings. And the fact that we're holding hands with some, and we don't want to hold hands with others, is a way to identify the views that we're holding onto. by doing the practice which one would do, by endeavoring to practice the way one would practice if one were a Buddha, one finds out the way one does not want to be a Buddha. So like, I know Buddha would like to talk to this person, but I don't. So then you've found the not Buddha part of you. when you don't want to hold hands with somebody who's walking through birth and death.

[27:08]

I don't want to hold hands with this person. You've identified not Buddha, which, in other words, you've identified attachment to some other idea about what should be happening other than be with this person or talk to this person or feel this thing you're feeling or be the way you are right now. I don't want to be this way. I want to be different from this other person. So now you're getting close to, you're feeling one of your views that you're holding onto. So if you just, if you keep trying to practice with that and keep noticing how you don't want to practice the way the Buddha would practice, you find out the thing that you need to let go of in order to be the Buddha. And if you can gently stay in that realm where you're refusing to be Buddha by refusing to practice like the Buddha would practice, you're getting close to letting go of what it is that's hindering you from entering into this relationship

[28:32]

where you are no longer having a view about how it should go. Or rather, you are no longer holding to your view about how it should go. But I want to be careful here that you don't deny the view that you have about the way it should go. Because if you deny your view about the way you think it should go so that you don't have to notice that you're attached to your view about the way it should go, that will become another kind of illness. So we need to, I need to like bring up my view about the way it will go and say it nice and clearly.

[29:34]

say it clearly, I have a view that I want the relationship to be like this. And then I can feel whether I'm attached to it. And then maybe I can say, and I'm attached to it. Right there is the opportunity for becoming free of that view. And it is also the opportunity of practicing together with all beings because in fact you are at that time, especially if you say it to somebody. And when I was saying this thing about, you know, I said, in sickness and in health, and I thought, oh yeah, there again, there's that marriage ceremony in sickness and in health. And I always remember then, again, it says in that, I think in that same, is it a psalm?

[30:37]

It's not a psalm. It's just a, what is it? It's a ceremony. In that ceremony, it also says, I think, I plight thee my troth. Doesn't it say it in that same place? I think it's in the same part of the ceremony or that same ceremony. I plight thee my troth. I plight thee my troth. I plight thee my view. I put my, troth means truth. I put my truth, you know, your views, the things you see and think and believe, those are your truths. The middle way is to let go of your truths. Let go of your truths. You don't have to let go of your delusions. Because you don't hold on to those. The delusions you hold on to are the delusions you think are truths. I put my truth in plight to you."

[31:43]

So you, in sitting in meditation quietly in a cave, the Buddhist yogi is letting go of all her views, of all her truths. Fine. But really, the Buddha way is to enter into relationships enter into relationships where it isn't just you that's letting go of your views, you also put your views in danger to somebody else. You endanger, you put your truth in plight to another because you may think you let go of your truth, but someone else may feel like, I think you're still holding onto it, darling. Practice is to let go of your views enough to put your views in plight to another, to endanger your views, to endanger your views, which means to endanger the self that you see and believe in.

[32:59]

So most of us have this special view of things exist, everything exists, and in particular this person exists independently of other beings. The practice is to get yourself in a situation where this person, where the view that you have about this person, where the view you have about this self, where the view, where the appearance and belief you have in your own inherent existence is now in danger. It's in danger to being discovered, embarrassed, and relinquished. You're in danger of entering the middle way. You've put yourself in a situation where you're in danger of becoming a Buddha. But in order to become Buddha, you have to endanger your view of yourself.

[34:03]

You have to dance with disaster and flirt with failure. Personal disaster and personal failure. If you do this dance and you do this kind of flirtation, no one will get hurt. If you flinch from it and go back to protecting this self, someone will definitely get hurt. But that's already going on and someone is getting hurt right now. Someone is getting strangled. crunched by being held. And it's not just you. When you hold your own view of yourself, it doesn't just hurt you.

[35:15]

It hurts everybody who's not the least bit different from you. It hurts all the Buddhas. When you relinquish your hold on yourself, you help everybody in the universe. So by going back and forth between the practice of letting go of your views of all things, and in particular your view of yourself, and entering into relationships where you feel yourself is endangered, where you feel yourself is threatened. By going back and forth between these kinds of practices, you gradually realize the non-attachment of Buddha and the way the Buddha interacts with all beings in a helpful way.

[36:22]

The way the Buddha responds to every situation in a helpful way. So let's see, it's, yeah. Usually, how long do these lectures, how long do these talks usually go? That's what you say. And I appreciate you saying it. How long do they usually go? Forty-five minutes? Forty-five minutes to an hour. Forty-five minutes to an hour. We're already at 45 minutes. So we don't have much time left if we want to go the usual length of time. You mean usual for you or usual? You know, I meant usual. I meant like usual, the big usual, not the little usual.

[37:31]

I know about the little usual. I've been at all those. The little usuals are longer than the big usuals. So anyway, the talk is over, but I thought you might want to practice this right now a little bit, and we can practice more during question and answer. But if anyone would like to come up here and express themselves and endanger themselves, please do. if there's anything you'd like to talk about. Yes, Daniel? Come on up here, Daniel. You see? Now, who is endangered there? Huh? Who is endangered?

[38:35]

You see, it's mutual. When I say, would you like to come up here and express yourself and thereby endanger yourself, I'm endangering myself. So I am, I want to, I want to. Before it's too late, I want to endanger myself. I'm endangered anyway. So it's like, what is it, safe for the safe way? Since we're friends, let's be neighbors. Since we're in danger, let's endanger ourselves. Okay? So here he comes. But I looked over there and I saw on the face of Reverend Foo Schrader a certain look. And what I guessed it meant was, and I'm not going to tell you until she tells me what it was. I'll tell you what I thought it was. I thought she was saying, he didn't really endanger himself. But what did you mean by that look? Come up here and tell me. If you're up for it. Here she comes.

[39:39]

Do you have any other questions? Just a moment, please. What did that look... Come on. It was love. It was a love look? Yeah. You knew that. I knew it, but I didn't know what variety. Would anyone else like to come up and interact? No other questions? No other questions?

[40:40]

Amazing. You have a question? It's a why question. Okay. Why questions are defensive. Are they is not a why question. I think they are. They are. When you ask how, okay, when you ask how, we can do it together. When you ask why, I don't know if you want to. Come up here, please. How does one transcend the fear?

[41:41]

Are you in it now? No. Well, you have to be in it to transcend it. Thank you. You're welcome. I did it, but I still don't know how. You didn't do it. That's how. In this kind of interaction, you gradually come to understand that we, I don't do this and you don't do this. We do it together. It's not by my own power or your own power that we are able to practice together. Some people say it's by Buddha's power, but Buddha's not other. Buddha is our actual relationship that opens up to us when we let go of our ideas of what our relationship is. So any other people want to let go of their ideas about what a relationship is and have one? This is a big group.

[42:44]

This is a good opportunity. Too good an opportunity. Here comes Elizabeth. Elizabeth says, it's a long walk. That's good. You see, it can come from way back there. Hi, Elizabeth. Yeah, that's good. So I plight thee my troth. Do you remember that? Be gentle with her about this now. You know, be kind. She's given you her truth. Now, when you come to meet her, don't just go, you know, and take her truth and crush it. Give her yours, too, please. Would you want to ask for that? Yes. Please, give me yours. Any other beings wish to come forth and express themselves, ask a question or make a statement?

[44:05]

I vow to plight thee my troth. I beseech you to plight your troth to all beings and become Buddha." Is there a song about this? I know several songs, but you've heard them so many times I don't dare bring them up. But the first one that comes to mind is, Getting to Know You. I see many people wincing. That's almost as good as singing it. Similar effect. But I recently, there's Paul. Paul gave me a book. Paul Hoffman gave me a book. And in the book, it has that song, Getting to Know You, by Rodgers and Hammerstein, by the way. And it is an introduction, which I didn't,

[45:19]

I guess I had heard, maybe, if I ever saw the movie, which I never did, but I probably should, The King and I. Before the song starts, she says something like, you know, oh, it's really nice what she says. I can hardly remember it, though. Something like, anyway, a teacher's job is to learn from her students, and I'm proud to say that I've learned from you. And the most wonderful thing that I've learned is getting to know you. But we're not going to sing that, right? Because Maya doesn't want me to sing it, right? Don't blame me. I'm not blaming you. I'm not blaming you. I'm accusing you. I'm accusing you of wincing when I said that. You did wince?

[46:24]

She's renounced her view. This is a convert here to Buddhism. So, yeah, so the teacher learns from the students. In other words, we learn from the other. And I'm proud to say my most favorite thing I've learned is getting to know you. Which means getting to know me. Are you ready, Maya? I'm ready. Do you want to lead it off? This is Maya's singing debut. Getting to know you. Getting to know all about you. Getting to like you.

[47:25]

Going to hope you like me. And know you, putting it my way, but nicely. You are precisely my cup of tea. May is a tea teacher. Getting to know you Getting to know you free and easy And I'm with you Getting to know what to say Haven't you noticed Suddenly I'm bright and breezy because of all the wonderful and new things I'm learning about you day by day.

[48:33]

May our intentions

[48:36]

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