I would like to begin this morning with a kind of description of the development of the ills of the world as presented by the Buddha Shakyamuni. Now, how's this? Can you hear me if I talk like this, or is that not loud enough? It's okay in the back? Someone said no. Okay, how's this? So first of all, everything seems to start with a basic... basic... or fundamental delusion or ignorance.

[01:04]

That's sort of the start of the whole thing. And the basic delusion or the fundamental ignorance is the belief that our lives are separate, which is the same as believing that the results of our perceptual process are reality. So human perceptual process creates an illusion or an appearance that we're separate.

[02:10]

Our sense organs and our mental processes give rise to a feeling that we have separate bodies, separate lives, separate fates, that we live in separate worlds even. This appears. And it's true that things look that way sometimes. And they look that way from the point of view of our perceptions. They don't look that way from the point of view, for example, of our understanding or our feelings or our love. Sometimes we feel about people as though they were actually exactly the same thing as us. Sometimes we act as though their life was the same as ours. And this is contrary.

[03:18]

These kinds of loving and compassionate ways of feeling and acting are contrary to our perception that we are separate. And again, the appearance that we're separate is one thing, but we actually tend to believe in it. And the belief in the perception of our separate existence, which is the same as the belief that my life is an independent event, that's the fundamental affliction of ignorance. which the Buddha realized in himself, was going on in himself. And it seems that this process and this belief and this ignorance is going on in all human beings, as far as I know, except those who have some kind of damage, like organic damage or something.

[04:21]

and their perceptual processes don't function the way most people's do, or their belief systems, they don't seem to be able to believe in the perceptual process. And then they, in some ways, don't have this kind of suffering. But also, they're isolated from the human ethos, and they suffer because of that. Basically, all human beings are implicated in this misery. Because of this belief in our separation, we feel pain, fortunately. Because if we didn't, we'd probably just go right ahead and live in a delusion and never experience reality and freedom. But fortunately or unfortunately, because of this sense of separation, when things happen to us in this kind of subject-object way, there's some pain in that.

[05:28]

I say fortunately because at that pain, as I'll say more about later, at that painful place is where we can reverse this process. However, the usual course of events is that when this pain arises, what happens is in relationship to this feeling of pain, this feeling of pain of separation which pervades positive feelings, negative feelings and neutral feelings. What we tend to do with that is we tend to basically deny it or run away from it or distract ourselves from it. And then what we do in that state of distraction or denial we do cruel things in that space, from that state of denial, from that state of running away from our pain, from that situation of trying to deny our pain, then further activities occur which cause even more elaborated and

[06:46]

well, horrible forms of cruelty that we do towards ourselves and other people. But these gross and momentous forms of cruelty and suffering are just basically the result of not facing this basic suffering. I don't know if Freud said this, but I think I overheard somebody say that he said, as a result of psychoanalysis or as a result of psychotherapy, what a person can do is actually return to authentic suffering, put aside these neurotic derivative forms and come back to basic suffering. I don't know if you did say that, but I think that that's part of the process of healing is to come back to basic suffering.

[07:53]

And at that point, then, Buddhist teachings apply. So once you start running away from your suffering, of course, then you crave various things which you think will distract you or will successfully save you or soothe you from this pain. And this leads to birth. which leads to old age, sickness and death. So this is a linear presentation of the origins of birth and death. It is a linear presentation of the dependent co-arising of cyclic existence of birth and death, birth and death.

[08:57]

And human birth gives rise to this process of perception, creating separation, believing that it's true, suffering as a result, and then trying to get away from that by various forms of craving and thirst and clinging and becoming, and then birth, old age, sickness and death, and around we go. Now, if in that process, as you go into the process and you get to the part where there's feeling, where there's pain, if at that point you stop and sit there with this pain, you reverse the process. You turn the whole world around.

[10:06]

You turn the whole world around at that point. The Buddha goes through the first stages. The Buddha is born in human body, develops the ability through karmic formations to have consciousness, has consciousness of separation, creates a body and mind separate, develops sense organs to reinforce this, has a feeling of separation and is impacted by something from the outside, feels something, and the Buddha stops there and just feels it, feels that sense of separation, feels the alienation, feels the pain, and then the process goes back the other way. It takes you back all the way to the basic delusion, and at the basic delusion you understand that the basic delusion is not a delusion at all, and there is release from this cycle of misery.

[11:23]

What I just presented is, this story is, you know, Buddha's slogan, this dependent co-arising. And slogan is, I think, what do you call it? I think it's a Scottish word. Do you know what it means? Oh, good. It means battle cry. It means battle cry. It's the cry of struggle to reverse this process of birth and death, of misery, the process of misery. It is the reversal of that process. this teaching of how this all, how this ill, how this suffering and all the cruelty that arises out of denying this process.

[12:38]

It's the slogan which turns you towards the reversal of this process. And this process, the way it works towards creating misery is a linear process. The reversal, however, is nonlinear, multidimensional, and totally interpenetrating and boundless. So one way we put it in Zen is we say that the medicine which reverses this process is just to clearly observe the process. Just clearly observe. Or another way to say it is that the medicine to reverse this process is simply to become totally absorbed in the process. So the observation which will reverse the process is not you sitting outside looking at the process.

[13:48]

It is to become so intimate with this process of the origins of misery that you're totally absorbed in the process. And in fact, you are already totally absorbed in the process. We all are. It's just we don't have awareness of it. So it is an awareness which is totally absorbed. The word clearly observe in this case from Chinese texts, the word clearly means to be resigned or to abandon. So you abandon yourself to the process. You throw yourself into the process which is giving rise to this. Another way to put it is to say to sit upright or to be upright in the midst of the awareness

[14:53]

of this process, the process by which self and other are constantly interacting, the process by which yourself and all other people, yourself and nature, are interacting, to sit upright in the middle of this process, to sit upright in the awareness of this process of dependent co-arising of birth and death. And to sit upright, to be upright in the midst of this process of the dependent co-arising of birth and death will mean that you sit upright in the midst of the process of dependently co-arising awakening. Birth and death, misery is dependently co-produced, but also awakening is.

[15:58]

They're actually in the same place always, because awakening does not begrudge any place in the universe. It totally penetrates every situation. So right there, In the origination of misery, if we sit upright and observe how birth and death, how misery is co-produced, there will be an awakening to the nature of that process, and that is dependently co-produced awakening. or again, to sit upright in the midst of self-fulfilling awareness is another way to put it.

[17:06]

To sit upright in the midst of self-fulfilling awareness. Self-fulfilling awareness is the awareness which is aware of self and other in such a way that you finally see the interdependence of self and other and then the self is fulfilled by the other. Rather than the other is something which is separate from you and you feel a pain of that, by accepting the pain of that separation, finally the other will fulfill you. And so your present in that awareness of separation leads to the presence in the awareness of how others fulfill you. Or another way it's said is to sit upright in the midst of self-joyousness awareness. Again, to sit

[18:14]

upright, to be present completely with this sense of separation, with this small self meeting the rest of the universe, to sit right there at that juncture, will lead to awareness of self which will be joyousness. The key is to accept the fact of the rawness, the irritation, the nausea, or just whatever level of pain and discomfort you have with the interface between this sense of self and this sense of other. If we can settle with that, the process is reversed. This leads to understanding of what the self really is.

[19:22]

This leads to an understanding of the fulfilled self, which is liberation from suffering. And not only that, but when this happens, When this understanding occurs, this also causes the entire phenomenal world to also realize this. If you have questions about this, I'll answer them in question and answer, how it happens. I don't feel like I'm going to be able to do everything I want to do and explain to you how it is. that the entire world is saved at that moment, that you accept your suffering and you are liberated by that. Maybe you already understand, but I'm not going to go into it right now. What I'd like to do is go into some examples and details of this uprightness and this awareness.

[20:32]

Are you ready for that? So uprightness. Uprightness is literally and metaphorically and allegorically and anatomically and allegorically and physically relevant. All those dimensions can be realized about this uprightness. So, in the literal, physical sense, uprightness means not to lean to the right or the left or forward or backward. Okay? Right now, are you leaning to the right or the left or forward or backward?

[21:44]

Uprightness is not leaning to the right, the left, forward or backward. But even now, right now, now I'm going to lean forward now. Okay? And now I've leaned forward. And where I am in this lean forward position, Right now, I can also realize in this position, not leaning forward from this position, or backward from this position, or the right or the left from this position. Okay? No matter what position you're in, there's always an uprightness. I can also now lean to the right, and now that I'm in this position, I can realize uprightness. It's hard, it's uncomfortable, but I can realize there is uprightness even when I'm leaning to the right.

[22:58]

When we sit formally as a ritual in this meditation hall, we try to just simply sit without leaning to the right or left, forward or backward. But no matter what position you're in, there's always that uprightness. It's not something you create. It's something you can discover. Nothing can take away your uprightness. As a matter of fact, everything constantly gives you your uprightness because everything is giving you the posture you have right now. You don't make this posture all by yourself. all by your small self. Your posture is made by everything. Therefore, you must be upright. So as an exercise to help us look for uprightness, we sit on this cushion and try to realize not leaning to the right, not leaning to the left, not leaning forward or backwards.

[24:12]

We try to realize that as a way to be aware of uprightness and discover it. It's always there. It is our nature to be upright. Now, when I say that to you, you know, that's just what I feel. If you disagree, please come forward. You're welcome to disagree. Now, another way to talk about what uprightness is, Another way to say not leaning forward and backwards is to say not being in the future, not being in the past. And when people walk around, or when you walk around or I walk around, oftentimes I can feel that I'm a little bit ahead of myself.

[25:16]

I'm coming to a room and I'm already in the room a little bit before I get in the room. Or sometimes I come into rooms and I'm a little bit behind getting in the room even after I get in the room. I'd rather not be there. So I'm leaning backwards or forwards. How can I live actually in the present of not going forward in time or backwards in time? That's also our uprightness, our actual presence. Uprightness can also be called readiness.

[26:45]

Just to be ready. But not ready for something in particular. Just being ready. Not being ready for something to come to your face or your back or from above or below. But be ready in ten directions. Not being ready for someone to attack you or kiss you. Not being ready for a compliment or an insult, but be ready for everything at once. to be, to look directly within without the slightest contrivance, without a hair's breadth of intellectualization.

[28:00]

Again, remember uprightness is not something that I do or that you do. It is the way you really are right now. Can you marry yourself? Can you wed yourself to this uprightness? Can you be married to this uprightness right now? Are you ready? Is everybody ready? Okay, I would just, I'm going to say one, two, three, and I'll say it slowly. And on three, if you wish, please marry yourself to your true nature. Marry yourself to this uprightness. See if you can feel it, even though you don't know what it is. Maybe I'll sing a little song before I count one, two, three.

[29:12]

Here comes the bride. Here comes the groom. One. Two. Three. I now pronounce you married. Self to true nature. Self, small self to your self-fulfilled self.

[30:22]

All beings are rejoicing at this marriage. Congratulations. In ancient times, two monks were traveling the path together. Their temperaments were different. One was, I don't know what,

[31:31]

One tended to rush ahead, lean forward. The other was laid back and relied on his background. So the one said to the other, our life is fleeting. Time is passing. Hurry up and catch up here. Come on. And the other one said, the one behind said, the great way is vast and wide. What's the rush? Both these monks are right. Life is fleeting.

[32:38]

This opportunity is rare and precious. Don't waste time. Hurry up and practice. Get thee to the moment of uprightness. Remember you're married and have responsibilities to your true nature. That monk is right. That's true. The other monk is also right, though, when he says, relying on this true nature, relying on our background, it's vast and wide, and there's no need to rush. That's another truth. Time is fleeting.

[33:43]

Don't waste it. Come on. Every step on the path, the rarest flower blossoms. The great way is vast. What's the hurry? Opening up her belly skin, She engulfs the entire universe. Each of these sides is one eye. We need both eyes. We need to balance between the urgency of this matter and the security of our true nature. So we have both eyes. We must balance them. This balance is uprightness. This balance is uprightness.

[34:47]

You already have it and yet you must take care of it. Now, what about settling with this pain? Right off, I want to say that this uprightness is what makes it possible to really settle with it. If you're not upright, it's hard to settle with this pain. With uprightness you can be comfortable even at the dead, which is really the most living center of this discomfort in this separation between self and nature.

[35:59]

But just to be upright without this awareness of this sense is not enough. We must be upright and accept this fact that there is pain resulting from the way our mind works and our belief in it. So please make yourself comfortable. And the way to successfully make yourself comfortable with this is to be upright. Be upright as much as you can. And being upright is something that you do moment by moment. You can't be upright for five minutes, or two minutes, or one minute, or thirty seconds, or five seconds, or even one second. Uprightness is faster than one second. There's lots of little uprightnesses in every second.

[37:08]

If you can feel one in a second, that's good. If you can feel two, that's better. Until finally maybe you can feel several moments in a second. And when you're in that kind of presence with yourself, you're getting closer to your actual life. And then you're in good shape to be able to be comfortable in the discomfort. to be settled and stable in this muddy world of pain. The practice of patience is implicated here very much. We need to make ourselves comfortable with this situation. If you don't make yourself comfortable by practicing uprightness and patience, then, of course, we will just go into denial again.

[38:14]

And again, what we do from denial, well, it's terrible. I want to say, of course, if the pain's too much and you want to create a buffer, sometimes maybe that's a good thing to do. It's probably better to create a buffer than to fly off the handle and hurt somebody. So that technique can sometimes be good. Like, for example, somebody starting to irritate you. You start to feeling irritated and you feel like, hey, I don't know if I can handle this irritation. I'm about ready to, what do they say, blow my top. So maybe I should create a little buffer here and say something like, well, it doesn't really matter so much what she's doing.

[39:23]

Or I don't care about her that much anyway. I'm not going to let this get to me. Matter of fact, I'm being silly to let this get to me. Forget it. Drop it. Don't be so picky. Don't be so high strung. Be a little insensitive. You're too sensitive. You're talking to yourself like this to create a buffer. to give yourself some space from this pain, to give yourself some distance from this sense of separation which is bugging you. Maybe that's good sometimes. But it's not so good to do it all the time because then you're not facing this thing. this fundamental problem.

[40:32]

You're not facing the signal, this irritation, this discomfort. You're not facing the signal which is telling you about your delusion. The pain shows you not just theoretically that you're deluded, but it shows you exactly the current example of your delusion, that currently what this person is doing is first of all what this person is doing is bothering you and it is bothering you because you think this person is not you or that you think this person is not you is you but they're acting like they're not you so on one level You've been hanging around with this person for a while, and you've kind of like, on some level of your body or mind, you kind of like have relieved yourself of the sense that you're separate from them. You're feeling kind of close.

[41:34]

It's almost like they're you. Maybe you're getting in touch with that on some level of your being. You do feel connected to this person, intimately connected. But now they're acting like they're not you, and that this is quite uncomfortable. So what are we going to do? Get them under control? Or perhaps talk ourselves more deeply into the belief that they're really not you, and therefore don't expect them to be like you. You know, as you start to wake up to the fact that you're connected to some person or some animal or some plant, then their behavior will paradoxically start bothering you until you completely understand that you're the same.

[42:44]

And you're not the same because they do exactly what you would do. But rather the fact that they're doing what you wouldn't do is telling you who you really are. What I will do and what you will do from the deluded point of view, is a limited repertoire of behaviors, and we're stuck miserably in that little box of the things we could do. What other people are doing, what all other people are doing, is showing us our total repertoire, and therefore showing us who we are. So I use this example over and over. If you get in the car with somebody who you feel a great distance from, somebody who you're very, you don't have much sense of them being the same as you.

[43:56]

In other words, you got a big, a sense of a big buffer with them. A sense of the buffer being so big that you have almost no sense of having a deep connection with them. and you get in the car with them and they're driving, they can drive pretty much, you know, wherever you, you give them a lot of room, unless it's a cab driver and you're paying for it. So if you're going, you know, from here to over there, like if you're driving from this end of the room to that end of the room, you let them take various routes. But if you feel close to the person, or even if you don't feel close to them, but actually on some level you actually do feel close to them, you don't think you are, but you actually feel that way deeply. And then if the person tries to go an unusual route, you can get quite upset. And even a slight variation in the route that you would take

[45:08]

you feel like they're violating your body as though they're reorganizing your internal organs and you have no sense of humor about it If you practice uprightness, it does not eliminate this kind of phenomena. It does not. Uprightness can be practiced even while you're still thinking that other people are separate from you. But the uprightness can allow you to, rather than get angry at the person or try to get them to drive exactly like you would, or rather than trying to create a buffer and say that their behavior really does have nothing to do with you, rather than those techniques, you just be present with the actual, sometimes intense pain that they took a left turn on this block rather than the next one.

[46:30]

the uprightness allows you to actually see the control, then finally you wouldn't have any pain anymore. If you practice uprightness, and this might frighten you all the way, if you practice uprightness, it will allow you to realize that as long as you still believe that you're separate from other beings, that the behavior of all beings, every single one of them, will bug you. Not just the few that you've decided, look, I have time to be bugged by these people. I can get upset about the way my spouse drives, and I do. But I can't get upset about the way everybody drives. I can't, you know, I can't, that's too much.

[47:40]

People won't accept that when they're giving me a ride home from a party, that I try to get them to drive home the way I would like to be driven home. It's just not grateful. But I will try to control my wife. And if I'm unsuccessful, I will get really upset. I can do that with a few people. And since we have a deep commitment to each other, she will tolerate me getting upset. And she will also be frightened to turn at the wrong corner. But if somebody offers me a ride, some friend or acquaintance, they do not want to have to put up with that kind of stuff from me. So I will not care. I will create a great numbness between me and this other person because it's just impractical to feel this irritation. And again, that may be a practical way to talk to yourself.

[48:45]

However, it leads to missing opportunities in the study of your mind. And it means missing opportunities for liberation. But again, we cannot stand this unless we practice uprightness. If you practice uprightness, you can stand to be irritated by everybody you meet. And they don't have to even be driving cars. Just blinking can bug you. A smile, a frown. And when they smile, it may be nice, but you still feel pain because it's such a lovely smile. Because it's such a lovely smile, you feel pain. You want to be one with them with this lovely smile. You want to take it home, and you can't. And if you try to take it home, that's not appropriate. The person doesn't want you to do that. You have to leave the smile on their face. And also, when the smile goes away, you have to let it go.

[49:49]

You really do. It's going anyway. And here comes another smile. You can't stop it. We cannot control these people. And because we can't control them, if we think we're separate from them, it will bug us. It will irritate us. It will make us sick. Not it will make us sick. We will feel sick because of the way we see it. The only way to stand this is and therefore to practice constantly with every person you meet is to be upright. Once you're open to this, you're in good shape. Once you actually let down the buffer between yourselves and others, and you can be bugged by people who aren't your spouse, when you can be bugged by distant relatives, that's good. It's good that you're bugged because you are bugged.

[50:52]

Actually, you are bugged. It does irritate you that you feel separate from people. But again, we have numbed ourselves to this. And again, we've numbed ourselves because it's practical to numb ourselves because we would have trouble coping with it because we don't have the uprightness to cope with it. So you have to figure out, each one of you, how much you can open up to this as your uprightness develops. So some people are quite open to this but don't have much uprightness and therefore they're very upset all the time. Other people are very close to it and don't have much uprightness and they're kind of numbed out or they take various drugs and stuff to do that for themselves. Now, if you practice uprightness and you aren't aware of this, that's when you need a teacher.

[51:57]

If you practice uprightness and you feel no irritation, you should find a teacher who will help you get in touch with the irritation. If you are practicing uprightness and you feel that you can stand and be present with this irritation, then you're in good shape. Then all you need to do is just settle more and more and make yourself more and more comfortable with this irritation, with this sense of pain at your separation from everybody. If you're irritated by everybody, that's a very good sign I propose to you that all human beings are irritated by their separation from all human beings, every single solitary one.

[53:05]

But I also say again that we cannot stand that except with a practice that makes us comfortable with it by not being in the present or past, not leaning to the right or the left, not leaning forward or backwards. We have to balance these two sides of this is an urgent matter, this really does hurt, and we have to figure this out, and this pain is actually a key an essential and indispensable key to liberation. And on the other side, don't get hysterical about this. We have to find a way to be calmly urgent about this matter.

[54:11]

So on one side, hey, this is urgent, hurry up. On the other side, the great way is vast and deep, all pervasive, you're okay. Don't get upset about this. Got to balance those two sides. Or as Suzuki Roshi said, what we're doing here is far too important to be taken seriously. And as I say, you must develop an upright swoon. You must relax and be upright. And urgency does not mean hurrying. Because it's an urgent matter, Because we don't have time to waste, therefore, we should not hurry.

[55:17]

You should take every step, meet every person with complete presence as though this is the last meeting you're going to have. And the reason why you should do that is because it might be the last meeting you're going to have. Give it your full, joyous attention. Don't rush into it or from it. And then, naturally, your body will trust that you can open up to the fact that your disunion from every creature is painful to you. You'll open up to that. You'll settle with that. And when you open to that fact and settle with that fact, you reverse the process of illness. You reverse the process of birth and death You go back towards your true home, which you have just married earlier today.

[56:19]

Okay? We all live with nature. We all live with our true nature. But there's a difference between living with somebody and being married to them. People can love each other and live together, but there's a difference when you have a ceremony and you say, I am committed to work on this until we figure out what it is. So today, some of you, or maybe all of you, married yourself to your nature. So now you're not just living with it, you're married to it, and you have responsibilities. So please be thorough.

[57:20]

Okay? What's that song? that the Seven Dwarfs sang? Hi-ho, hi-ho, it's off to work we go. What's the rest? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da, hi-ho, [...] it's off to work we go. Da-da-da-da... What did you say? From nine to three, it's misery. Ah, perfect.

[58:13]

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