Faith that Allows Doubt and the Idea that All Ideas are Contingent and Empty 

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Someone gave me this Barack Obama doll.
And inside I noticed there's some quotes I think maybe by Barack Obama.
One of them says, my faith is one that admits some doubt.
And I thought of, I guess I feel like,
my faith also admits or allows some doubt.
And then I was thinking that what we just chanted was,
I vow to hear the true Dharma and that upon hearing it no doubt will arise in me.
Nor will I lack in faith.
And so one way to hear that is that when you're hearing the Dharma,
that the hearing doesn't, in the hearing no doubt arises.
That's one way to hear it.
The statement of when I hear it no doubt will arise.
And I guess I could, I guess for me when I'm hearing the Dharma maybe at that moment,
the doubt doesn't seem to be an issue.
But still there might be openness to doubt.
It might be a Dharma that allows openness to doubt.
I certainly feel that the process of wisdom involves questioning.
And that when wisdom knows or when wisdom realizes the Dharma,
the questioning goes on.
So doubt in the sense of questioning seems apropos of the true Dharma.
And also the wisdom which knows the truth,
it seems like for me it has an open, flexible quality to it.
The Bodhisattva's mind of no abode,
a mind which doesn't reside in any kind of mental object.
So even though the object of the consciousness might be the truth,
the mind of no abode doesn't reside in the truth,
doesn't reside in anything.
And the truth it sees, the wisdom which knows the highest truth,
the truth says, don't abide in me.
The truth says, you can't abide in me.
Don't camp out here. That's the kind of truth this is.
And the wisdom says, fine, I won't camp out here.
I won't abide here.
Satsang with Mooji
And discovering this mind of no abode
might involve the study of our self.
And the study of our self, I feel, involves studying our thinking.
For example, studying our self might involve studying that we think that we do things.
Or, you know, there could be the thought,
I think I do things.
Or there could be the thinking,
I think I do things.
In the background, or at the base of my talking to you now,
actually is a kind of faith.
A faith that it would be good to pay attention to our thinking.
Or, I have the idea that it would be good to pay attention to my thinking.
I have the idea that certain ancestors have said
that the Buddha way involves studying the self.
That the Buddha way involves studying self.
That the Buddha way involves studying thinking.
So there is that value, I feel, in the background of me bringing this up here.
So I'm both bringing something up, that I have the idea,
it's an idea, and I have the idea this is a helpful idea,
but I'm also letting you know that behind me bringing it up
is a faith that is somewhat useful to bring it up.
And I'm also going to bring in, to relate this,
not only to the ancestors of the Zen tradition,
but some of the thinkers in the American history that I think relate to this.
And one of the thinkers that I'm thinking of is named Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson.
And John Sheehy told me about a book called The Metaphysical Club.
So in reading this book I read this thing that Emerson is said to have thought,
or have some thoughts.
He avoided abolitionism and he avoided, he dropped out of the Unitarian Church
because he felt like those, he dropped out of the Unitarian Church
because he felt like institutionalized religion and abolitionism, or maybe isms,
would discourage people from thinking for themselves.
And when I read thinking for themselves, I thought, yeah, people talk about thinking for yourself.
And I thought, well, I guess what I would understand thinking for yourself means
is that you actually are studying your thinking.
Everybody thinks for themselves, I mean everybody does their thinking.
But how do you encourage people, not just to do their thinking, like,
this is right and that's wrong, this is true because Jesus told me it was,
or this is true because Buddha says it was, or slavery should be abolished.
These kinds of thoughts, these are thinking, people are doing the thinking.
Or slavery should not be abolished, people are doing the thinking.
Thinking for yourself, what does that mean, thinking for yourself?
I think it means look at your thinking.
Be aware that you are thinking this.
So I thought that the term thinking for yourself that Emerson is talking about,
the way we put it in Zen is, I think, clearer.
Study your thinking, study yourself.
That will help you more realize your thinking and realize yourself.
But first of all, study yourself.
Study your thinking.
And I think institutional religions do actually often,
even if they teach people to study their thinking,
they still might discourage people from studying their thinking.
But some institutional religions or some religions, period,
but particularly institutionalized ones,
might discourage people from looking at what they're thinking.
They tell you what to think, but they don't say,
now look at that and see what you're doing.
They don't necessarily do that.
Even in Zen center, people might say,
okay, we're at Zen center, we're going to have a sashin.
And they don't necessarily say,
and please look at yourself and see how you think about this sashin.
Or, you know, this is what we think is valuable here.
Now, let's look at this.
Let's examine this.
It's possible, I have this idea,
it's possible that if we study our thinking,
we'll become free of it.
And...
So I would like to teach,
if I was a teacher, I would like to teach students to think for themselves.
In other words, I would like to teach students to study their thinking.
I would like to encourage, rather than discourage them from studying their thinking.
And our own habits are really what discourages us from studying our thinking.
Our own habit of thinking and then moving on to the next thinking,
rather than thinking and stopping and looking at what we just did.
Or, while we're thinking, be aware that we're thinking.
Our own habit is to not do this meditation, is to not be mindful.
And we can find a social reinforcement for not being mindful of our thinking.
I also, when Norman Fisher's wife Cathy,
or I should say when Cathy Fisher,
was Xu Tso at Green Gulch, I wrote in Chinese something that Emerson said,
which was,
the secret of education lies in respect for the student.
So the teacher should be actually looking at the student's thinking.
And if the student wasn't looking at their thinking,
the teacher's interest in it might draw the student's attention to it,
rather than the teacher telling the student how to think.
So the book I'm referring to,
Emerson is in the background there,
but the main characters in the book are three Americans
Oliver Wonder Holmes Jr.,
and Charles Pierce,
and William James,
and John Dewey, those four.
And three of them I'm somewhat familiar with,
and have always appreciated.
I haven't really...
I have almost no...
Up until this book I had almost no awareness of Oliver Wonder Holmes Jr.
But it turns out that these four people were in a club together
for nine months, I think.
And the club was called the Metaphysical Club.
And what they discussed at that time,
according to the author of the book,
is what the book is about.
And it's about basically one idea.
And it's an idea about ideas.
They are very different people,
but they shared an idea about ideas,
or you could say a belief about beliefs,
or a view about views.
And I think their basic idea about ideas
was that ideas are entirely dependent.
That ideas do not develop according to their inner logic,
but they develop in dependence on things other than themselves.
In other words,
their idea is that ideas are empty of inherent existence.
Entirely dependent means
that they are nothing but what they depend on.
They have no inner logic, inner logos, inner essence.
Like, slavery is bad.
War is bad.
And actually these ideas existed in America
very intensely.
They had an intense life before the Civil War.
And often no war was in the same person as slavery is bad.
And then there was also slavery is bad and should be abolished.
Thomas Jefferson saw that slavery was bad,
but I heard he said,
it's like holding a wolf by the ears.
It's terrible to be holding a wolf by the ears
and it's terrible to let go of the wolf.
So, before the Civil War started,
a lot of people thought slavery is terrible,
even people who had own slaves thought it was terrible.
Many people thought it should be abolished
and often the people who thought it should be abolished also were
Quakers and opposed to war.
This was their idea.
But I don't think that before the war
people were aware that these ideas
were entirely contingent,
were empty.
I think that was not a well understood idea about those ideas.
I think those ideas were more like ideologies for these people.
In other words, they thought that there was actually something
actually inherently true in those ideas,
other than that they were entirely contingent.
And then this thing happened,
according to the book, overnight.
People who thought something should never be done,
now thought that their very thing should be done.
Their ideas about what was appropriate changed.
And some of them, Oliver Wendell Holmes for example,
right in the middle of the war,
recovering from a wound in battle, a battle wound,
did an extraordinary thing.
In the midst of this horror, this terror,
that he was in the midst of,
he decided to check out his philosophy
and see how it applied to the horror
that he and the country were going through.
I think before the war he grew up in a family
that was opposed to slavery.
Actually, he was in many ways opposed to
all kinds of even more subtle forms of cruelty.
And what he saw when he checked out his philosophy,
he saw that the test of an idea
is not its immutability,
but its adaptability,
which is similar to...
Ideas, you know, ideas actually can last
because the concepts can last.
But their viability, their survival,
their survival, their continued life in people,
is due to adaptability,
their life doesn't continue.
They don't have permanent life.
So this is the idea that these four people had
about ideas.
That it's not the immutability of them
that gives them life.
But their adaptability.
And the idea that war is bad,
that we shouldn't do it,
that idea lost its life in the United States.
That very wonderful, it's a wonderful value,
it lost its life.
Pretty much.
And a new idea came called
this war needs to be had.
And people had all these different agendas
for why that was so.
So we had this horrible war,
but some of those ideas, for example,
that war is bad and we shouldn't do it,
or that it should be abolished,
that idea lost its life after the war.
And not just because people went to war,
but because they were kind of in shock
about what happened to their ideas.
And how they themselves flipped.
Like Emerson even said,
sometimes gunpowder smells sweet.
So these men, this one particular young man,
in the war, he fought for himself.
He wasn't thinking for his daddy,
or for Abraham Lincoln.
He fought for himself.
In other words, he turned around and looked at his own philosophy
in the middle of the war.
And he got together with other people
who, during the war,
and after the war,
were willing to actually study their own thinking.
And when they did,
actually, John Dewey was not in the metaphysical club, right?
He was too young.
Too young to be in the metaphysical club.
They wouldn't let him in.
But these three,
when they turned around and looked at their thinking,
they found that this is the nature of their thinking.
And not just their thinking, but everybody else's too.
That's what they thought.
What effect this has on American culture,
the assessment of this,
we can consider, but
it may be part of what made our country able to
open to the teachings of Buddhism,
to the teachings of emptiness.
That some of our ancestors
had actually come to the conclusion where they could see
that ideas are empty.
That they're contingent.
And they live when certain conditions are there,
and when they're not,
they don't live that way anymore.
Actually, without going to war,
some fashion designers understand this.
You know?
They understand the idea of green
is alive this week.
They can see
that green is the adaptable color right now
in this area of the planet.
And they actually also understand that they can make a living because
green will not continue to be the
in color next week, next year.
But on certain issues like
whether we should go to war or not,
and whether we should have slaves or not,
that is harder for people to be creative about that.
They need sometimes a war
to wake up to that
the vitality of that position
depends on the conditions which support it.
And Elizabeth asked me the other day about the teaching, you know,
learn the backward step, or take the backward step,
which turns the light around
and illuminates the self.
But actually it's take the backward step which turns the light around
and shines it back on your thinking.
Study your thinking.
Be aware of your thinking,
which in other words, be aware of your karma.
Turn the light back,
search back into your own vision.
Think back into the mind that thinks.
The Zen ancestors
have been teaching that off and on
turn around,
step backwards,
think back to your thinking,
think for yourself.
And then, what do you find?
What kind of thinking is there?
Who is there?
Who are you?
And what are your thoughts?
So, again,
these American thinkers,
these American philosophers,
these American, yeah,
I guess you could call them all kind of philosophers,
in a way,
certainly Peirce and William James
was originally a psychologist,
but towards the end of his life became more of a philosopher.
So, they're all kind of philosophers.
One of them was a judge
in the Supreme Court, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
But really, he was a philosopher
even in the battlefield.
He was a philosopher.
Or at least right after the battle,
when he was recovering.
So, I don't know,
I think it is possible for a person to be a philosopher
without studying their thinking.
Maybe it's possible.
But these philosophers
did study their thinking.
And, in this sense, they are philosophers
where they're studying their psychology,
but it's not just psychology
to notice that the psychological process is empty.
That's more of a philosophical insight.
So, you're studying psychology,
you're studying ideas,
you're studying thinking,
that's studying psychology.
And then you see
that these psychological phenomena
are entirely contingent.
And that their vitality,
their actual engagement with the society
will depend on conditions.
Some of your thinking,
like I just also saw this article about this woman,
she's called the leader of the new left.
What's her name?
Naomi Klein.
So, she had an idea,
and now her idea,
the conditions are coming together,
so it's like it's alive.
And then people will,
I don't know what they'll do with that,
but you can see
the life of it is entirely contingent on,
for example,
Barack Obama dolls
and the economic crisis.
You have economic crisis,
and then people suddenly,
then her ideas become very alive.
And then people think,
well, then there's actually some truth to them.
And then make an ideology out of Naomi Klein.
Ideas, right?
These philosophers,
and the Buddhist philosophers,
are saying something different.
They're saying,
yes, she's popular now,
and some of your ideas may become very popular too.
Now Barack Obama is
the savior of the world.
You know?
That's a popular idea.
It's a lovely idea.
My grandson has been betrothed
to one of Barack Obama's younger daughters.
So he's going to be marrying her at some point.
That idea will have life,
will come alive,
if certain conditions are met.
It'll be a kind of a big, lively idea.
Not just for my grandson,
and whatever her name is.
What's her name?
Sasha?
Not just for Sasha and Maceo,
but it'll be a national idea.
And it'll have vitality,
but conditions have to be met.
My daughter has to work things out with Michelle.
And then there's the kids to consider,
whether they want to or not.
These conditions.
The idea is there.
I just told you about it.
How much life does it have?
Well now it has some life according to the conditions of no abode hermitage.
It has some life today.
But will it live any longer?
Probably a little,
but not much necessarily,
unless certain conditions come to bear.
If you go out and tell stories about it,
maybe it'll become national news,
and then Sasha will hear about it,
and say, what's going on, and so on.
So I guess I'm just saying that
I am
I am
happy to,
if the conditions are there,
I am happy to direct my attention
towards the ways in which these people
studied themselves,
these western men
studied their minds.
And I want you to know that I've seen
there's some sign in the book
that some western females also did the same thing.
And they are recorded in the book.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
So there's some women who did the same practice,
who looked at their own ideas.
So here's an idea,
which
comes in relationship to this idea,
and that is
that
if a person does the practice of studying themselves,
and studying their ideas,
of learning this backward step,
they will become
a Bodhisattva.
They will become a great being,
and be a blessing to the world.
They will have ideas like everybody else,
but they will understand the emptiness of their ideas,
and then their ideas will become opportunities
for them to express
their understanding of the nature of their own ideas.
And they will not think that their ideas
are better than other people's ideas.
They will think that other people's ideas are empty,
and their ideas are empty,
but they will still give their ideas
to the world.
But the world will see a being which can give ideas
with understanding of what the idea is.
In other words, they will see beings
who have gifts to give,
and who understand
the nature of gifts,
which is the same nature as the nature of
ideas.
And I have that idea,
and that idea has life for me this morning,
so I'm giving it to you.
And then I will keep watching,
I vow to keep watching,
so that I don't
think that that idea actually
has some independent existence
from those who
disagree with me.
But actually, no one disagrees with me.
Yes, Jackie?
Especially Jackie.
She doesn't disagree with me.
Does Jacqueline disagree with you?
Yes, Jacqueline disagrees with me.
That's just an idea.
It sure is.
So, are you using
thoughts
and ideas
to have the same meaning?
One meaning of thought is concept.
Thought can be used as a synonym
for ideas and concepts.
Sometimes people use thought, however,
as a synonym for consciousness,
which makes things more complicated.
But a Buddhist thought
is like a Buddhist idea
or a Buddhist concept.
And sometimes people also use thought
for thinking,
but I tend to not use thought
for thinking,
but to use thought.
I usually use thought for
equal to idea or concept
or image.
But some people use it more widely,
and so it's a little confusing.
It has,
for me,
a little take of a belief in it.
The word thought?
Idea.
Idea has a take of a belief?
To me, it's more
like
at the base
of a cluster of
thoughts with certain intention.
Whereas a thought can come
and just fly away.
But an idea,
it's more like a philosophy,
more of a belief.
Is that
accurate or not?
I think
when people,
again, it depends
who we're talking about.
When a person is
a person like these gentlemen
I'm referring to,
when they have ideas,
they are aware that this idea
is entirely contingent.
But even their beliefs,
they also have beliefs,
and they believe,
but also they actually see
that beliefs are also,
the vitality of belief is also contingent.
So at different phases in human history,
not just human history,
even non-human history,
non-humans also have concepts
and ideas, I feel.
That's one of my ideas that I have.
So,
even if you're right
that the word idea
refers more to the belief side,
it's possible to believe
and actually to see
that beliefs are empty,
that beliefs are contingent.
In other words, you could have the belief
that beliefs are entirely contingent,
including the belief
that beliefs are entirely contingent.
And you could have the idea
that ideas are contingent,
and the idea that thoughts are contingent.
Yes?
You referred to your mind
and watching its intentions.
Watching its intentions, yes.
You know, in sitting,
and just watching my thoughts,
I
I don't
I feel like I don't get to
to see the changes
that
Now I'm getting myself into trouble,
I can see that, but
the changes that I wish
to see happen within me.
And I think that's because
I'm just watching the thoughts superficially
versus
versus
the intention,
the idea,
behind the thought.
Can I say this back to you
and see if I got what you said?
May I say this back?
So I kind of feel you're saying
that if you study your intentions
or study your thinking,
that if you devote your time
to this study,
that it's hard for you to see
that this study is
promoting or bringing about
certain changes in your being
which you'd like to have.
No, that's not what I'm saying.
I'm just saying that there are different levels of it.
That watching my thinking
Yes.
is superficial
in bringing about
a change.
In bringing about change.
Of ideas.
So you're saying that you feel like
watching your thinking is superficial
vis-a-vis bringing about
change of ideas.
I feel like there is
there is a
and maybe that's why
we can't change our habits.
Maybe that's why
we're like
these patterns
that are so ingrained.
There's more to just...
Okay, so I actually have a nice
difference to offer you.
So I'm saying
if you superficially
observe your thinking
that will be
that observation process
will change your ideas.
I think
sometimes people think that their ideas
can't change because
they're good, like for example the idea
that slavery is bad.
They don't want that to change.
Dash, it's not
going to change.
Or that
war is bad.
They don't want that to change, so they hold it.
Their mind holds it.
I'm saying if you watch your thinking
if you watch your intention
you will notice
that
ideas
are changing.
Not so much the
idea changing, but the ideas
you're considering, the ideas you're open to
are changing.
You will notice you're less clean
to your ideas.
And in that sense, your ideas
the ideas you have
the ones that belong to you, the ones you're lined up with
the alignments
will start shifting.
You will feel less aligned
or I should say less stuck
in your values.
If you study your thinking.
And some people might say
I don't want to be less aligned with slavery
is bad.
And so what I'm proposing here to you
is that if you wish
to bring about
the welfare of the world
including you wish
for the welfare of all beings who are
in slavery, if you want to realize
that for them
that not being attached to the idea
that slavery is bad
will help you realize that.
If you want
to help people realize the Bodhisattva
precept of not killing
I'm proposing that studying
your thinking, which
includes I want
to practice not killing
studying your thinking, which is
I think killing is bad
if you study that thinking
that will help you realize
non-attachment to your thinking
quotes I think thinking is bad
and realize the precept of not
killing.
So I'm saying, although
you maybe don't see this yet
really clearly, that your
study of your thinking
will not so much bring about
the change of, it will bring about
a change of your ideas in the sense that
you will become more fluid
and relaxed and playful
with your ideas.
Already you have
already you are
what do you call it
aware of many many
ideas, some of which you don't
call yours.
Some of which you do call yours.
So what will
happen if you study this way
is that your ideas
will become the ideas
of people who aren't
you.
That the ideas of people who aren't you
and who you used to think
weren't your ideas will become your
ideas.
You know, and who says,
well I do not want George Bush's ideas
to become my ideas.
Well, they won't
become your ideas the way your ideas
are now your ideas. They will
become your ideas the way your ideas
are when you let go of your ideas. You won't
hold on to those.
It's just that then you can be friends with George Bush
and help him let go of
his ideas.
So now we
have the idea of a
President-elect who is willing to talk to the
Cubans, who is willing to talk
to terrorists. You know, people say, are you going to
be buddy with the terrorists?
No.
But I might
actually start to talk to them.
The point of this being that we have
the value that it would be good
to disarm the terrorists. It would be good
if the terrorists disarmed themselves.
That would be good. We have that value.
So because of that value, I want to
engage with them. But even that value
that it would be good if the terrorists disarmed,
I realize that's contingent too.
And if I study my thinking,
I will be able to be
more relaxed and playful with the idea
terrorism is bad or
terrorism is good.
George Bush is bad, George Bush
is good. Talk to the Cubans,
not talk to the Cubans.
In other
words, you could skillfully use
the world
to benefit the world, including
that you
realize that that agenda is also
contingent. Its vitality
is contingent. Its death
is contingent. So this
is, I think, making a big
case for the value of the truth.
And the truth is
that my ideas
are empty and
your ideas are empty.
And if I study my
own thinking process,
if I can open to that process,
I will learn
emptiness. Just like if you
can open to the process of surfing,
you will realize the emptiness
of water
and of life and of
surfboards.
So not all
of us are surfing,
but in this room, all of us are
pretty close to being ready
to study our thinking.
Jackie says,
she's not so sure that studying her thinking
is going to open her
to the deeper understanding
of her ideas
so that, of course,
my ideas will change. In other words,
my ideas will no longer be my ideas,
they'll be just ideas.
You haven't seen that yet,
but I'm saying you will. And I'm telling you
also, the fact that
you can tell me recently
that you've
noticed a tenacious
relationship with your ideas
comes to you because you've been studying
your thinking.
You used to be tenaciously holding to your ideas,
but you didn't even notice it.
You thought, I'm not tenaciously holding to them,
they're just absolute reality, that's all.
It's not that I'm holding to them,
they're just true.
Everybody that saw
this would be holding to it, because they're reality.
Now that you've been studying yourself, you notice,
hey, I'm holding on to these things pretty tightly.
This is the beginning
of the end
of holding to your
ideas tightly.
And you just keep studying yourself
and you will finally have
perhaps very similar values
to the ones you've already had,
but you'll be much more flexible with them.
And the way you use them
will inspire
people to study themselves.
They will see the beauty, not so much
in your ideas, but in the way you relate to them.
Everybody knows how to hold on to them very tightly.
Little children can hold on to their ideas
very tightly. They knock themselves
out, literally, by holding to their ideas.
In the earlier part of the day
they're holding them,
a little bit of looseness there, but
as the day progresses,
they get tighter and tighter, and then
they just crash.
They melt down in the
futility of thinking
that holding these ideas will protect them from
disaster.
Elizabeth?
Reverend Shoho?
And Homa? Yes?
So first,
is it an idea
that ultimate truth is
emptiness of ideas? Is that an idea?
Yes.
Ultimate truth. The emptiness of things is
also empty.
And so we say, you know,
that which
dependently co-arises,
or that which is dependent co-arising,
I proclaim to be emptiness.
Even our highest teaching in Buddhism,
dependent co-arising,
everything's, only things that exist
are dependent co-arisings.
There's no other things that exist.
If something doesn't dependently co-arise,
it doesn't exist.
Everything that does exist,
is a dependent co-arising.
So, that which dependently co-arises,
everything that exists,
I declare to be emptiness.
That being a conventional
designation, is the middle way.
Very simple.
Little bit deep, but very simple.
Little bit deep means
it's hard to understand.
It requires tremendous effort
to understand that statement.
But anyway, there it is.
Would you say it again?
Maybe.
But basically, everything that exists
is dependent co-arising, everything that exists
is empty.
What I just said,
being a conventional designation,
what I just said, because it's the way I'm talking now,
is another dependent co-arising.
But isn't it also an idea?
What you just said?
Well, conventional designations are ideas.
I could say
that being idea, but that's not the way
he said it. That being a conventional
designation, it's not just an idea.
It's a conventional designation.
In other words, it's a concept
that has
some vitality because of the contingency
of society that can make sense.
In the Buddhist world,
what I just said makes sense.
So, it's not just an idea.
It's a conventional idea
within a certain linguistic
context.
So, it's an idea, it's a concept,
and it's a conventional...
Now, I'm uttering this concept.
The fact that this is a conventional utterance,
adding that to my...
I proclaim the ultimate truth,
and in proclaiming it,
I actually gave you a conventional truth,
a conventional designation of it.
Keeping that in mind
about statements about the ultimate truth
is the middle way.
I'm telling you the ultimate truth, but I'm telling you
it's empty.
That keeps you balanced.
So, I'm telling you the most important idea that there is,
and now
relax with that.
And apply that to everything, which will help you
relax with everything.
I want to
check on my idea of wisdom.
Okay.
It seems to play in different teachings
I've heard recently over the years.
One is your teaching to express yourself fully.
There's a teaching
which is, please express yourself fully.
Yes.
There's that teaching, yes.
And there's also
one of the things we chant
sometimes about
if you're a ship in the ocean,
the ocean looks circular,
and
when you fill it entirely,
then you see that something is missing.
If you don't
fill it entirely,
you don't see that something is missing.
So,
that, to me, is linked
with full self-expression.
Filling that full circle,
then you realize the ocean is so much bigger
than your full...
Your idea, your point of view,
the ocean is so much bigger than your point of view.
But you might not realize that if you just go out
in a circle of water.
You might think,
hey, a circle of water.
But that's because you think you know something
about the circle of water.
But if you really engage with that circle of water fully,
you realize
there's something more than the circle of water.
You understand that.
There's something missing in the circle of water.
This whale that I'm just meeting now
didn't come from the circle of water.
The ocean must be bigger than this
because this whale is bigger than the circle of water, etc.
But,
it's possible that, you know,
to be in the circle of water
and not be engaged with it
very fully and think
this is the complete story.
Studying yourself
and fully expressing yourself
are two different ways of talking
about the same process.
These men in the West
that we're talking about
and the women who followed them
in the West
and the men and women in the East
who studied themselves.
Through studying themselves,
they fully expressed themselves.
So, full self-expression
and studying the self is the same thing.
And if you study yourself,
you realize something's missing.
For example,
the self of the circle of water
is missing.
Or, if you study yourself,
the independence of yourself is missing.
The self of yourself is missing.
The independence of yourself is missing.
You see that when you fully engage yourself.
The self of your ideas,
if you fully engage with them,
you realize it's missing.
When I first started studying my ideas,
like when I first started studying...
Actually, I wasn't even studying.
When I first received,
war is bad.
When I first received, Jews are good.
When I first received, Jesus is bad.
When I first received, Jesus is good.
When I first received these ideas,
I didn't study them.
I just took them and held on to them.
When I started to study them,
I finally realized
that all these ideas and all these values,
there's something missing.
And what's missing
is an inner logic,
an inner truth.
That's what they're missing.
I realized that because I fully engaged.
So, again, Oliver Wendell Holmes,
a very smart young man,
he had slavery is bad.
Actually, even war is bad.
But particularly slavery is bad.
And some other values he had
about kindness and so on.
He gets into war
and he starts to fully engage these values.
And fully engaging them,
he realizes that they're empty.
He begins to realize they're empty.
And spends the rest of his life
trying to bring that realization
into his relationship
with people.
Totality.
So once we realize the emptiness of thinking,
once we realize the emptiness of ideas,
we open the door
to the totality of ideas.
And that's the great being.
Once we realize the emptiness
of our thinking,
we open to the great being of our thinking.
And the great benefit
of that truth
is the great being
which is realized through that truth.
It isn't just to realize the emptiness of things,
it's to realize the emptiness
of them and not be attached to them
and then use them to help beings
because you understand.
Reverend Shoho?
Yeah.
One logic I'm seeing
in all these ideas
is the dynamic
of
feelings of being a being
and feelings of crownlessness
and then using ideas
to orient myself.
And so I wonder
if this engagement of study
Can I just
enter right there?
We do use ideas to orient
ourselves.
That's not a point these people are making.
Ideas are tools to be used
to orient in the world.
But we
sometimes forget that they're tools
and confuse the tool
with the world.
Because sometimes the tool is a way
of construing the world.
I like the example of glasses.
You put glasses on your eyes
to see in a different way
than you would with them off.
But once you get them on your eyes
you can't see the way you saw them
before you had them on.
Your vision before having them on is lost to you
and you think that what's going on
is actually
the way you're seeing through your glasses.
But in some ways it helps you cope
if you're trying to read a telephone number
to call an emergency room.
It kind of helps you cope with the world
to have these glasses.
But then there's a fundamental
error
in the glasses.
Not just that
they're a different view, but the error is
that you tend to confuse them
with what's there.
Like my eye doctor said,
the world is a lot clearer out there
than you see it through your eyes.
But the world actually is that way.
But really what he means is
the world is clearer in these glasses
than it is in your eyes.
But he said it's clearer
out there.
These glasses
are a tool to deal with the world
in a way that you can't deal with the world
without them on.
It's not that the world is actually the way
it is in the glasses, but you want
it to be the way it is in the glasses.
In other words, you want to be able to read that number.
So they are tools, and we lose sight
of them being tools.
And that's a big problem, that we lose sight of it.
But if you study yourself, you realize,
oh, I am losing sight
of them being tools, and that's making
me rigid.
And etc.
If I remember that they're tools,
then there's more possibilities here.
Homa?
I was just
looking
at the ideas,
and
what came to me
was, first of all,
there is this
idea,
that I give the importance
to my idea
to become
it.
So I kind of
see my
existence there.
However, giving so
much importance of it,
importance to my
idea, then I have this
fear on the other side
of it, which is not existing.
So the more
I'm afraid, the more I
hold on to the idea.
Okay, excuse me.
I just wanted
to point out now, at this point,
that you are telling,
I hear you telling me this,
and I have the idea,
that you're telling me about how you study
your thinking.
You're giving me a report now.
You're observing your thinking.
And then as I observe
my thinking,
I
see like
in between,
and I
want to see how can I
neither be this
nor that.
Yeah, so part of your thinking
is, I want to
discover the middle way.
Okay, so
I hear you
saying that you're observing your thinking,
and I hear you saying
that you want to
stay in the middle way.
And I
think that in order to stay in the middle way,
you should stop trying to stay
in the middle way.
But you have to watch, I'm suggesting this,
but you have to watch
your attempt to stay in the middle way
in order to not be
holding on to the idea
of staying in the middle way.
The idea of staying
in the middle way is fine, but if you
hold tightly to the idea
of staying in the middle way,
that will make it hard for you
to be in the middle way.
You can't actually stay in the middle way.
Being in the middle way
is the mind of no abode.
But your mind wants to
stay in the middle way. If you watch
your thinking that wants to stay in the middle way,
you will find a way to
be in the middle way,
free of your idea of staying in the middle way.
And you are observing
this. It's hard work.
It's similar to
what you're talking about, I'm saying.
She's studying her thinking, you're studying
your thinking. And one of the things
she's finding,
one of the things Homa is finding,
is that her thinking is that
she would like to stay in the middle way.
And if you keep studying that,
you will give up trying to stay in the middle way.
And if you give up trying to
stay in the middle way, you will find the middle way.
And if you keep
studying, you will find the middle way without
trying to hold it.
Because the middle way cannot be held.
It's light
is saying, do not hold me.
Receive me.
Live me. Let me live you.
But don't try to hold me.
So this
let me live you,
There is this,
I don't know what words,
discrepancy, you just used,
you just used words.
This, let me live you,
you used those words. This is a
messenger, this is an angel.
Telled from the truth.
Telling you that it
wants to live you.
And
if you keep watching how
you're attaching to
the wonderful things, like
freedom and the middle way and all that,
if you keep watching your thinking,
attaching to this stuff, you will become
free of this process and you will be able to
let the truth live you.
You saw the what?
Yeah, right.
You're not accepting it.
Because of a habit of holding
on to something.
Even the most excellent thing
we can't hold on to.
And if you're willing to
study your thinking
and see the kind of things that you're seeing,
see the kind of things that other people are
seeing,
if we study our thinking,
if we're open to that process,
I'm predicting
that we will
actually find a way to be with the truth
without grabbing it.
In other words, without making it
something that has independent existence.
The truth, again,
that things don't have independent existence,
you can also make that
into something which does,
but we're trying to not do that.
The way you don't do that is
watch your thinking, which
tries to grab on to everything.
Yes, Rachel?
I mean, Kondo-san?
Yes, Kondo-san?
How is it possible to,
if you see that your thoughts
and ideas are empty
and not really true or false,
how is it possible to still
act on them?
Well, once you see
your ideas as
empty,
then your action becomes
the enactment
of that vision.
The vision of the thought?
The vision of the thought being empty.
So, once I
see my,
for example, if I have a thought of compassion
towards you,
and I see that
my thought of compassion is empty,
and also the compassion is empty,
and you're empty, then
the way I relate to you
is basically unfolding
that vision of the emptiness.
It's not so much relating
my vision of
it's not so much relating
my vision of compassion
or my vision of you,
it's primarily that I'm actually
trying to express the fact
that I've realized that
you're empty. Or, in other words,
that I'm trying to express
that you're me.
I understand that you're me.
So then what I do is an expression of that understanding,
which I understand
will be compassion,
but I've actually emptied compassion,
my mind is emptied of compassion,
and you and me.
And so now, from that,
so I do act, but my action
is an expression of that understanding.
We do keep acting.
Just a question,
upon what understanding?
Are we acting upon the understanding
that our ideas
are permanent,
immutable,
and have a self?
Or are we acting from the understanding
that our ideas are contingent
and relative?
And then we still have ideas
and still act, but it's coming
from a different understanding
and this is also up for testing.
Yes?
So using
Naomi Klein,
who you mentioned before as an example,
Yeah.
And so what's she an example of?
An example of somebody
who has ideas and wants to put them out
in the world.
No, she's not an example of that.
I mean, she's no more of an example of that than anybody else is.
She's an example of somebody
who has ideas and seems to want to put them out
in the world, but her ideas
have life now.
Whereas a while ago,
her ideas, oh I don't know,
they might have had life, but not as much as they do now.
Because of the financial crisis
and because of a new
administration and because of the
Americans
having a different country,
the contingencies are such that her ideas
are like really hot.
People were listening to her before,
but now everybody wants to listen to her.
But her truth is contingent
and the vitality of it
is contingent.
That's what I was pointing, she's an example of that.
Okay,
I thought you were implying that the way
she was doing it though was not
with that understanding.
I haven't talked to her, I haven't
tested her.
She might be,
if I talked to her, she might be just like George Bush
for all I know.
So,
the way you originally described
her could have
equally applied to George Bush or
who knows who, even maybe
Barack Obama, I don't know.
Barack Obama looks a little bit like he understands these people
that I'm
talking about.
The fact that he says my faith
admits of some doubt.
Admitting of some
doubt is a little bit like
I admit that my faith is somewhat contingent
and maybe I'm like
you know,
not only maybe is my
thought contingent, but maybe I'm even
attached to it.
So that kind of language
makes me feel like he's an example of someone
who understands this.
What you said, I think
she, like all of us, likes to
put her ideas out.
But what you said originally, she would
be just like George Bush.
Whether she understands the emptiness
of what she's saying or not,
for me, remains
to be seen.
And so in order for her to give her
ideas as a gift to the world,
how would she do it?
So again,
now we have the basic Bodhisattva practice
of giving gifts. If you have
ideas, which you do, if you have thinking,
which you do, and your thinking is
always a gift, you will understand
that your thinking is
entirely
dependent.
Entirely contingent.
If you make all your ideas
gifts.
If you understand that all your ideas
are empty,
then you will understand all your ideas are gifts.
But if you don't yet
understand that your ideas are gifts,
I mean are empty, make them gifts
and you will understand that they're empty.
If you understand they're empty, you'll realize that they are
gifts. That's the way
you'll give them. You won't give them to
manipulate things because you don't see the world
that way.
You know the causes and conditions will make
them, give them their
currency, their coin.
So, whether she has
this flexibility of the mind of
no abode or not remains to be seen by
me. Maybe if I met her I'd feel
like, oh wow, we got a Bodhisattva
here.
And this Bodhisattva just
happens to have these ideas
for this time.
If she really is a Bodhisattva, her ideas
won't be the same next year.
However,
the contingency will
determine whether they
will have life.
But I think Bodhisattvas actually,
because they're in touch with this, their ideas
tend to have life because their ideas are
gifts.
So they keep
living. They have
the gift which keeps giving.
Because they keep
letting go of their ideas.
They keep letting go of their ideas.
Their ideas keep being giving, so their ideas
keep having
vitality, but also
they're not their ideas.
They're just the gifts that are flowing through them.
So I wasn't
using her as an example. I was using her
as an example of someone whose ideas
have now become very alive.
They're wonderful to
hear about because they're
all courant.
They're like
the time has come for them
and it's beautiful to see
sometimes.
The coming together of the conditions
to make a certain idea really shine.
And these ideas of these
19th and early 20th
century philosophers,
it may be
that now they have a new
birth of freedom and life
of their ideas will come now because
of this book. People will now see
all.
And the Buddhists will say, oh great, somebody's
pointing out the Buddha's wisdom
in some of our American ancestors.
Maybe this would be a way
to help people open up to the Bodhisattva
practice. So it's kind of like,
that's probably why John read it and told
me about it. Because he probably said, I think
I see some Bodhisattva activity
in this story here.
And I think I do too.
Sometimes it helps Americans if
we talk about Americans rather than
East Asians.
And then
after they listen to us talk
about the Americans, they might
open to the East Asians.
Which might help them understand
the Bodhisattva spirit
in American history.
Lots of good people in America
but not too many of them realize
the emptiness of goodness.
Which limits
the goodness
of our good people.
Karen?
I can see how the notion that
slavery is bad and I want to stop it.
I can see how that will create a lot of trouble
for me and for other people.
The notion that slavery is bad
and I want to stop it.
That's a problem.
It's not a problem by itself.
It's a problem if you make it into an ideology.
If you think it's
inherently true,
if you think it has a self,
then we have an ideology
and then we have a war.
So I'm trying to translate it
into, in my mind,
into a statement about
I don't know if it's good or bad
but I'd like to alleviate the suffering
that is bound up in it.
Is that a more subtle version of the same problem?
I don't know if slavery is good or bad
but I'd like to alleviate the suffering around it.
It could be
a new version
of what the person held before
and then they let go of it
and they came up with this other version.
And so
the newly released
the new baby
of the released old program
often will have this freshness to it.
And so
you might be able to talk to a slave owner
with this
brand new idea
of, you know, I'd like to alleviate the suffering.
He might say, I would like to too.
Actually, I've been wanting to alleviate
their suffering for a long time
but I
need them in order to build my new house.
But I would like, is there some way
to please help me?
They like us to come to prison.
A lot of people like us to come to prison
to make the prisoners more comfortable
but they still want to keep
the prison going.
But if we come in there acting like
the guards and the establishment are creeps
and the prisoners are good,
they don't want us to come.
So that thought
might be
a new thing that has life
in giving away
the immutable, slavery is bad,
it must end.
And this new approach might be coming from
loosening up with the old idea.
But then you have to do the same now with the new one.
You have to let go of that too.
But that was a nice one.
Give it away, Karen.
Give it away.
Let's see if we can find a new one today.
And so you say, OK, OK.
Give it away, Karen.
Just a minute. Give it away.
Give it, give it, give it.
And you gave it and it's gone.
Now what was that idea again?
You might be able to remember but actually forget it.
Let's have a new one, Karen.
A new thing
for today.
You gave away that one.
It's been given.
Now what do you want to give us today?
Well, today I'd like to say
blah, blah.
Which might have nothing to do with slavery.
And that might be just the best thing for all concerned.
That might be what's really
apropos of alleviating suffering.
Yes, Charlie?
Do you have some suggestion
for how to deal with
other people?
Wait a second.
Wait a second. Before you say that.
Do I have some suggestion about how to relate
to other people?
You can stop right there, can't you?
I can stop there if you want.
You can stop there.
The way to deal with other people including this
dandy little subset which you are about
to bring up.
The way I would suggest will apply
to all the subsets.
So what am I going to say?
It applies to this subset.
We can go to the subset later if you want to check it out.
But it applies
for dealing with other people. What's the way of dealing
with other people?
What?
What?
Yes, realize their emptiness.
That's the way to deal with other people.
Which means to realize their yourself.
Which means to make
every action you
give, every action that
you're involved with, to make
every action a gift.
That's the way to deal with other people.
Make yourself a gift.
And receive their actions as a gift?
When you make yourself a gift, when you really get into
that practice, you will understand
that everything they give you
is a gift. But you can start with the
other practice. You can say, the way to deal
with other people is to be mindful
that they are a gift.
They are a gift.
Charlie is a gift.
Max is a gift.
Yuran is a gift. That's one way.
The other way is, I'm a gift to Yuran.
I'm a gift to Max. I'm a gift to Charlie.
Which means, I give myself to them
with no expectation.
That's the way to deal with people.
Which is the same as
other people are myself.
Which is the same, other people are empty.
And then, Max, you want to give a subset now?
Yeah. Charlie is a subset.
Max is a subset. Yuran is a subset.
Men are a subset. Women are a subset.
Children are a subset. They're all treated
the same way.
Which is the same as
ideas are
entirely contingent.
I have an idea of you.
It's entirely contingent.
Dependent on things
other than itself.
Entirely contingent means
there's nothing to itself. It just depends on
other things.
That's the way
to deal with everything.
Not just people.
Tracy?
Is make yourself a gift?
Is another way of saying that?
What's the relationship
between that and kindness?
I don't want to know, is kindness overrated?
Kindness comes
basically as
giving,
Bodhisattva precepts,
patience,
enthusiastic effort,
and concentration.
Those are kindness.
That's a summary of kindness.
That's kindness put in terms of
virtues.
Now, wisdom, strictly speaking,
isn't exactly kindness. It's just
understanding. However, wisdom
is what makes the kindness
fully function.
Wisdom, but wisdom
in some sense is a different dimension
than kindness, because wisdom is just understanding.
It's just reality.
But
it protects
the kindness practices
from being lost.
And the kindness practices
are what develop
the wish
to benefit beings.
And the first one
is giving, which is
connected to the last one of wisdom.
You practice giving, you'll have wisdom.
You practice wisdom, everything you do is a gift.
But if you don't understand
that other people are
yourself, then act like that.
Give yourself to
them, but if you give yourself
to someone who you understand as yourself,
you don't expect anything back,
or forward, or sideways.
You just give because of your understanding.
But if you don't understand that,
well, just give yourself that way
and you will understand.
So the beginning practice
of giving and perfect wisdom
are really the same thing.
So,
I heard we're going to get some
kind of so-called moisture,
some wind, and some rain.
And this morning it was
bright and sunny, and I thought,
well, it looks like we get to start the day
of no abode with sun,
and now the weather is coming,
so maybe we can have lunch before the storm hits.
You can eat on the deck
before the wind and rain
touch your
perfect body
and your perfect mind.
May our intention
equally extend.