invoking the metaphor of the process of going down into the cave of the green dragon. Sometimes this process is described as having two aspects. One aspect is wholehearted sitting And the other aspect is meeting the teacher and listening to the teaching or asking about . This retreat is set up in having these two aspects. One aspect is you have a chance to sit wholeheartedly repeated effort.

[01:02]

Moment by moment you have opportunity to sit wholeheartedly and you also have an opportunity to meet the teacher and listen to the teachings and ask about the teachings. And I would say to you now that sometimes our practice, our meditation practice is described, you know, teachers say these words and students hear these words, but the meditation practice is sometimes described as having two, also having two further aspects or gestures One is a gesture which is conducive to realizing a state of deep tranquility and awakeness and alertness and flexibility.

[02:16]

Gesture is a gesture to actually study our experience, study phenomena, and develop a profound vision of them, a true vision of them. And then these two sides are actually brought together to attain the deepest wisdom. So again, on one side of our practice is to develop a very innocent mind and body. Another side of our practice is to develop a correct vision, an accurate vision of reality. By studying and listening to teachings and thinking about the teachings and applying them to phenomena, and listening to teachings and applying them to phenomena until our vision becomes in accord with reality.

[03:29]

And then to combine that correct vision with this profound calm so that we become calm like our correct understanding. We become reality, physically and mentally. So those are two aspects which seem different at the beginning of the practice and finally are combined as the most profound wisdom, a wisdom that we become. Some of you Some of you will be working on probably what we call tranquility practice during this retreat and also in your daily practice. I sensed in talking to some of you already that your daily practice is of this tranquility type, calming type of meditation.

[04:39]

And some of you have been doing that practice and are also starting to do insight meditation. The teachings I offer you this weekend are going to be the insight or wisdom type of meditations, wisdom teachings. And those of you who are in your daily practice are mostly concentrating on concentration or tranquility. For you, these teachings will be something to listen to but not necessarily something which you will be meditating on while you're sitting. So, Again, the tranquility type of meditation is a meditation where you are basically training your attention.

[05:52]

You're focusing on letting go of I mentioned last night putting thoughts about right and wrong, putting thinking which is trying to figure out in a given situation, this kind of discursive thinking to try to figure out what should I do, what's right, what's wrong, this kind of thought. Who likes me, who doesn't like me? What can I do to be popular? How much makeup should I put on today? These kinds of thoughts. What should I wear? This kind of thought. In tranquility practice you just put that on the shelf for a while. It's one of the reasons why some Zen practitioners cut their hair really short.

[06:58]

Because when you wake up you don't have to think about how to wear it. And when you go to the barber you don't have to figure out what style. or how much to tip the barber. Just do the same thing. It's very simple. You don't have to think about your hairstyle. Also, is nice for the same thing, basically wear the same thing every day until it gets really dirty. And then put in the laundry and wear another thing which is pretty much the same thing. It's calming not to have to worry about your appearance anymore, not to have to think about it. So again, we make a commitment to practice good and avoid evil, but in Tranquility Meditation, we don't think about it for the time being. We just wholeheartedly sit or or wholeheartedly walk.

[08:03]

Hear those birds? You don't, in tranquility meditation, you don't try to figure out how many there are and what type they are. You just hear that. And does that sound familiar to something you sometimes hear in your head anyway? See, now they stop because I'm talking about them. You just let go. Now they may come back again. Tranquility style. And it's definitely part of our practice to meditate that way. We do need that type of meditation. We do need that type of skill, the skill to be able to actually thinking. But the other side of practice is to use your thinking to listen to the teachings which tell you about the nature of your experience, and also tell you about how we tend to

[09:19]

so you can become aware of any misunderstandings which we usually have. And then tell us about how to, like, stop believing our misunderstandings and gradually make a transition to a correct vision. On that side of meditation we practice thinking, use our thinking, use our discursive thought. And again, in my talks with you, both in the group and individually, we're using discursive thought. And on the side of using discursive thought, the wisdom side, there's three particular phases or types One is the kind of wisdom that comes from listening to the teaching and thinking about it.

[10:27]

Actually I said listening to the teaching and studying it, learning about it. And the next phase is to think about it, to reflect on it, to see how it applies to your life and to come to a deeper meaning of it. And the third phase is when you take that deeper meaning with the deeper and correct meaning of experience, and you combine it with the tranquility, and then you become that meaning. That's the third phase of the wisdom. So part of what we're doing here is you'll be hearing teachings and studying teachings and perhaps starting to think about these teachings. And that is part of wisdom training. You may not get far enough in these teachings to be ready to actually meditate on them. In other words, you may not be able to develop enough understanding of these teachings to actually be ready to become them.

[11:34]

It takes a while to get them really clear. But you can start now. Here last fall, I already started these teachings with you, which are teachings about the nature of all your experience, the nature of all things, the nature of all events, the nature of all phenomena. And so I told you about a teaching from the Buddha that all phenomena have three characteristics. The basic characteristic of all phenomena Really what they are is that they're dependent core risings. Every experience is a dependent core rising. Every experience has an other dependent character. You, each of you, has another dependent character.

[12:46]

Each of you is another dependent character. your other dependent characters. You depend on things other than yourself for your existence, even in the present moment. And because you depend on things other than yourself for your present existence, you don't last more than a second, more than an instant. You don't keep yourself going. Conditions don't keep you going either. Conditions create you, and then you disappear, and then you're created again. Another person is created. You do not make yourself, you are made by independent beings other than yourself. are entirely dependent on things other than yourself for your existence right now.

[13:55]

That's your other dependent character. and another character of your present existence, what's called imputational character, in that you also have a character which this mind which you have, this mind you have, and your mind is an other-dependent character, in each moment you're given a moment of life, you're given a mind, Your mind is given, your mind is created, your mind exists depending on things other than itself. And the mind that you have is a mind that imagines, that gives rise to which it superimposes upon itself,

[15:09]

which it superimposes upon all of its experiences. So the mind arises in dependence on things other than itself. And then the mind imagines that something could exist not dependent on things other than itself. The mind imagines an independently existing the mind imagines that things are actually graspable by themselves. And it projects this image upon things which are actually not graspable by themselves because they're dependent on things other than themselves and they're nothing in addition to that. So you can't actually ever get a hold of anything, but we project onto things a packaging image.

[16:15]

So all of our experience has had that quality too. They have an ungraspable, interdependent, totally dependent, and interdependent side, and they also have an apparently graspable, independent side, or That's the second aspect of all of our experiences, of all the things we know. And the third aspect is the way they really are, ultimately, and that is that this packaging which we impose, which we project into what's happening moment by moment, actually never reaches what's happening. that the ideas that we project onto things by which we get a hold of them are actually absent in the things.

[17:19]

So the way I grasp myself, the way I grasp myself, I'm actually not a graspable thing. I'm not nothing. I'm actually a wondrous interdependent phenomena. But the way I make myself, that way actually never is in me. Therefore, I can never be grasped. I can never be found. And you can never be grasped by me or by yourself. You can only be grasped as your idea of yourself. Only your graspable imagination of yourself can be grasped. But you actually never get touched, never get reached by your grasping mind. However, you're totally immersed and living in your ungraspable other-dependent character.

[18:22]

Your other-dependent character is living, is your actual life. It's just that you can't grasp your actual life. You can only grasp your imagination of your life. And the fact that you can't grasp it and the total absence of any graspable in what you are, that's your thoroughly established character, your third character. So I will continue to talk to you about these three characters, understand what they are, But for now I'm going to just tell you that there's two, in some sense, two different styles of relationship among these three that I want to mention. One style between these three is a style where they're actually kind of squished together or confused.

[19:33]

One style of relationship among these three is to strongly to the other dependent character as being the imputational character. That's one kind of relationship you can have between those two characters. But the third character they really are I just told you, is that actually they're not actually together. Your ideas of things are not actually together with them. Your ideas of things can only be superimposed upon them, but they never reach them. However, if you strongly adhere to your ideas of things as being the thing, that strong adhesion is the source of misery. which means you, not only you but you actually say that one is the other.

[20:44]

So like I said last night, part of Zen practice is to give up your ideas of practice, give up your ideas of yourself and listen to the teacher. Now you're hearing, the teaching you're hearing is that When we do not give up our ideas about things, when we hold to things as being our ideas of them, that is suffering. And the truth is, adhesion is totally imaginary. Excuse me, the adhesion isn't totally imaginary. The adhesion is something we try to do but it doesn't actually happen. But thinking that it does happen, thinking that you're actually characterizing them, generates great pain in our life. Plus it tends to proliferate and cause it to happen again and again.

[21:53]

So not only is it painful and the source of pain, but it also tends to increase itself. So one image of this is basically like putting a mask on somebody and thinking that this is the mask. But it's not quite like that. It's more like, in some sense, putting a mask on something that's very unclear, something you can't quite grasp, and you just put a mask on it. Oh, there it is. You know the word persona? It means mask. It's a Greek word which means a mask, persona. So I guess the word person comes from the word for mask.

[22:57]

So it's not that... It's just that what we usually think the person is, is the mask which our mind puts on the person. And our mind is built... reject masks onto people. When we meet a person, we're built, you know, we actually, our body kind of knows it's a person, knows it's a being. Like us, our body kind of knows that, our mind kind of knows that. So then our mind puts a mask on it, a face. person is that mask, even though the mask never actually reaches the person. The mask is not even skin deep. The mask doesn't even reach their skin. And I'll parenthetically mention that

[24:06]

we have the expression, beauty is only skin deep. But actually it's more like the mask isn't even skin deep. But the beauty of a person is behind the skin, behind the mask. The way the person is actually not creating themselves is basically beautiful and wondrous. but you can't grasp it. So, which do you want? Beauty that you can't grasp or beauty that you can grasp? So you say, well, I'd rather have beauty that I can grasp. Okay, then you slap a mask on it, then you got it. And you lose the beauty, but you got it. So that's the funny thing about our perception is that it makes it possible for us to get a hold of things, but the price of getting a hold of them is that we lose them.

[25:12]

or that we distance ourselves from the way things are in order to get a hold of them. But the thoroughly established character is that no matter what we project on things, actually the projection never reaches the thing. That no matter what we put on things so that we can get a hold of them, actually we never can get a hold of anything. And actually we're never separate from things either, which is another reason why we can't get a hold of them. Because they're not out there separate to be grasped. But to confuse them is a source of our misery. On the other side, do not strongly adhere to our ideas or our images of things as being them. and we don't strongly adhere to that, then we can see the character of things.

[26:22]

We can't really see them in the sense of being able to see them as a graspable thing. We just see that our ideas, we just see that we can't find our ideas of things You have an idea of somebody, but you won't ever be able to find that idea of somebody in the somebody. And if you can let go of strongly adhering to the ideas of them, then you can come to realize the absence of your ideas of people and things in the things. And when you see that, then you can come to actually be able to understand what things and beings are. So again, the first big step is to start loosening the grip on things as being the way we imagine them.

[27:58]

And as that we can actually see, oh, my way of grabbing things doesn't actually reach anything. And then you can actually come to understand the other dependent character. You can't see the other dependent character in a graspable view, except by confusing it again with your ideas. But you can see it and meet it and live with it, which is enlightenment. You can be intimate with it and realize that you are intimate, that your other dependent character is that you are intimate with your other dependent character. Your other dependent character is that you are intimate with other beings, that you are intimate with things other than yourself which give you life. What you are is actually something born of self.

[29:01]

That's what you actually are. When you understand this, you actually become intimate with your actual intimacy with all beings. You realize, you manifest the intimacy. And that intimacy is enlightenment. That way that all beings are supporting you, and you are supporting all beings moment by moment, that is enlightenment. Some of you were making breakfast this morning, so you didn't chant here. What we chanted was, was partly a description of this realm of where the unsurpassed perfect enlightenment of all things resonates with other things.

[30:16]

So there is this vast enlightenment of each thing which resonates to all other things and is received from other things back to itself. That actually is the other dependent character. However, this other dependent character can also give rise to you are also supported to, you are also sponsored to, give rise to by which you can package this intimacy, get a hold of it, and become deluded. So somehow we're also allowed by dependent co-arising to dependently co-arise as ignorant beings, which I guess probably you've heard about.

[31:23]

So enlightenment allows itself, the enlightenment of things allows itself to cooperate with beings. So delusion can arise. and the way it arises, I spoke of a while ago. And enlightenment, although it can be realized, and I spoke about the way it can be realized. the expression going down into the Green Dragon's cave, I first, I heard this expression in a verse, in a poem, celebrating a Zen story.

[32:57]

The expression going down in the Green Dragon's cave comes from, I guess, a legend or kind of a myth about a cave where a dragon is living, and in that cave the dragon is guarding treasures. Oftentimes they speak of the dragon as guarding a very perfect pearl. And maybe you've seen pictures of of dragons with a pearl in their mouth. Have you seen that? Sometimes they have a big pearl in the mouth. So that's just an Asian image. And so this image was picked up in this poem celebrating a case, and the case it's celebrating is a case of a Zen teacher named Matsu who was not feeling well.

[34:05]

And the superintendent of the monastery came to him and said, "'Teacher, how is your venerable health today?' And the Zen teacher said, "'Sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha.'" And then celebrating his talking that way, it says, How many times have I gone down into the green dragon cave for you? The verse says that. And the poet who wrote that, he could be saying, you know, here I am. He's a Zen poet, right, a Zen teacher. He could be saying to the people reading his poem, Like I could be saying, how many times have I gone down into the green dragon cave for you? But I could also be saying, or he could also be saying, how many times have I gone down in the green dragon cave for you, Master Ma?

[35:17]

But another way to say it is, how many times have I gone down into the green dragon cave to become you? How many times have I gone down into the Green Dragon Cave to become like the great Zen Master Ma? When somebody asks me, when I'm dying, how's your health, teacher? I will be able to say something, just like Master Ma. I could say Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha, but that's already been used. How could I say something like that when I'm dying? So I go down in the Green Dragon's cave

[36:24]

for you, but I also go down there for him, but I also go down there to become him. I go down into the cave to become like all the great masters, all the great Buddhas. That's why I go down there, to attain them, to attain them for you, to go down there for you and to go down there to attain the ancestors for you. And when we attain the ancestors, then when somebody comes, when you're dying and someone comes to ask you how you're feeling, you will be in that way that they are. You will be in the place where everybody's, where the enlightenment of all beings is coming to help you. And where the enlightenment, when it reaches you, It's back from you and goes and helps all beings. You will be in this place of the actual soup of enlightenment.

[37:31]

And out of that soup, out of that interdependence, out of that intimacy, you will be able to speak that way. So recently someone said, how do you apply, excuse me, we usually start this process of meditation by starting to meditate on the other dependent character.

[38:47]

Starting to meditate on the teaching that every phenomena exists in dependence on things other than itself. we have this character that we exist, we have this other dependent character that we exist through the support of things other than ourselves, and it is by that character that we exist. So we start with that. And then someone said, well, how do you apply that, for example, this person said, to pain in the legs? That was the person's question. But I also thought to apply it to illness, because when that person asked the question, a lot of people were ill in the meditation hall. So how do we apply it?

[39:49]

When we have pain, physical pain or illness, or of course when we're about to die, how do we apply the teaching of dependent core to this pain, this illness? So part of what we might discuss during this retreat is stories of Zen masters as they were about to die. And there are quite a few stories of Zen masters when they're about to die. There are not so many stories of Zen masters when they're about to be born. People pay kind of close attention to Zen masters when they're about to die. How is she going to do it? Let's watch how she does it. Let's ask them questions.

[40:52]

Let's tease her as she's dying to see how she reacts. Feeling? Feeling sorry for yourself? So the Zen school, of course, likes the Zen school, so the Zen school tells nice stories about its leaders. It often says that when these ancestors, when these great teachers were about to die, they kept doing Buddha work as they were dying. We can start now here to apply the teaching of dependent co-arising to our illness, [...] to our pains, to our pains, to our pains, and also to our health, health, and also to our pleasure.

[42:03]

So we meditate on dependent core rising means we remember that every pain and every pleasure and every healthiness and every sickness is a dependent core rising. That's the basic practice. If I'm healthy and I'm practicing meditation on the other dependent character, then I remember that this health, that this healthiness does not create itself. It lacks the nature of creating. And therefore this health, I will come to see that this health is impermanent, unstable, changeable, not worthy of confidence. And then when it does change, when it does cease, an illness comes.

[43:20]

Perhaps I'll be ready to continue the meditation with the illness, rather than, if you're not doing this meditation and the illness starts, at least at the beginning of the illness, you might not start practicing meditation with the illness to some kind of like unhealthy reaction to the illness. Like, you might not only be ill, but you might be unhappy about being ill. Can you imagine that? Almost two and a half years ago, in Houston, I fell off a bicycle, very nice bicycle. onto some very nicely made cement. And I hit the cement really hard. And when I hit the cement, I said, shit.

[44:21]

But then I recovered. And I said, and then I said, relax. So if you're driving along in the world and you're meditating on the other dependent character in the world, and suddenly you're smashed on the sidewalk, you continue, you have a chance to continue meditating on the other dependent character of the world. Now I'm on the sidewalk. Before I was riding, now I'm smashed. Now I'm crumbled. Now I'm broken. Now I'm operated on. Now I'm out of the operation. Now I'm doing rehab. And now I'm walking. And now I'm walking, but this is unstable, impermanent, and not worthy of confidence. Any moment, every moment is going to be more change.

[45:28]

So, But on the other hand, if you're not meditating, then when you have these difficulties, you can get really unhappy about the difficulties. If you're meditating on these difficulties and you're meditating also in this way when you're not having difficulties, when things are going quite nicely, then you won't get happy when you're having pleasure and you won't get unhappy when you're having pain. Your happiness will not go up with the pleasure and down with the pain. The pain and the pleasure will not be your happiness. Your happiness will be coming from the meditation. You'll be happy that you're doing the meditation, not happy that what you're meditating on is pleasure.

[46:37]

Your happiness will become the meditation, not from what you're meditating on as pain. You won't be happy because you're sick. You won't be happy because you're healthy. You'll be grateful when you're sick, and you'll be grateful when you're healthy. You'll be grateful in pain, and you'll be grateful in pleasure. you'll be grateful for dependent core rising because you're meditating on dependent core rising and you're grateful to be meditating on dependent core rising. Yes. Yes. However, if you're practicing dependent core arising with your illness, you probably wouldn't have become unhappy in the first place.

[47:47]

But if you're ill and you're not practicing meditation on dependent core arising, if you're not doing that practice, then generally speaking, you will become unhappy when you become sick. Mike, give me your health. I'm taking your health away now, Mike." If you're not meditating on the pinnacle of rising when I do that, you probably go, oh, jeez, you're being kind of mean to me, aren't you? Rather than, oh, I know what you're doing, you're just checking to see if I'm practicing the pinnacle of rising. You say, right, that's right, that's what I'm here for. I'm coming to check. And if you're practicing, you go, that's a nice check, thank you. And I say, but I still have to take it, okay? And you say, fine. Now I have to give it back to you. Fine. So, in the practice, you know, it's like, this is basically, this practice is basically how to, like, drop the egocentric approach to practice.

[48:58]

Independent Core Rising. So you're practicing like you're going to a retreat or something, or you're going to a retreat, like you're driving to the retreat. You could just be driving to the retreat, not even at the retreat yet. But on your way driving to the retreat, you could be doing it because you expect to get something from the retreat. Getting something from the retreat. Can you imagine that? That you'd be going to retreat thinking to get something from it? That seems pretty easy to imagine, right? Or at least you know other people sometimes do that.

[50:01]

Now when you arrive you think, well now I can actually really get down to getting something. I can get something for me. Don't practice meditation, don't practice Zen to get something for yourself. Don't even practice Zen to get something for other people. Practice Zen just for the sake of practicing Zen. Practice the Buddha way just for the sake of the Buddha way. It's another way to say, don't practice it with egocentric motivation. But another way to say it is, just meditate on the other dependent character of the moment. When you're driving to the retreat, just meditate on the other dependent character of the experience of driving to the retreat, rather than be thinking about what you're going to get when you get to the retreat.

[51:06]

Realize that you're actually there on the highway driving a car that's impermanent, that's unstable. You're driving an unstable car. The driving experience is unstable. It's unreliable. This car is not worthy of confidence. You say, well, maybe I should pull over. And I would say, why not? Even pulling over, however, is not worthy of confidence. It doesn't mean when you pull over you're going to be... Now I can be confident. Now I'm safe because I pulled over. You can get hit on the side of the road too, not moving, just sitting there. Maybe you should start the car up. Then maybe you'll be safe. No. Whether you're parked or moving down the highway, this thing that's happening, what you're involved in, this life you have of sitting in a car... of having a body and a mind in a car that's hurtling down the cement. This is a situation that's constantly changing.

[52:15]

It's not making itself because of the support of things other than itself, and therefore it's constantly changing and not worthy of competence. Then you might say again, I think I'll pull over, not because I'll be safer when I pull over, but so I can... And then you might pull over and you might say, okay, now I think I can drive a little further, I'm going to go to the retreat. And when I get to the retreat, I'm going to actually meditate on this. Not to get something out of the retreat, but to get used to being aware of this other dependent character of things. Yes? As this wisdom practice matures, it seems like in the beginning it's an intellectual understanding. It starts intellectually, yeah. Does it become perceptual or kind of automatic as it matures?

[53:19]

Become perceptual? Do I think that it's that way, or do I perceive it to be that way? At a... quite advanced stage, you come to actually, what you're actually looking at will change. Actually, when it first changes, it's intellectual. But it is actually a different way of seeing things. It's not just a different way of thinking about things. You actually will see things differently at a certain point. But the first vision will be an intellectual vision. I was thinking that the calming practices or the insight practices would culture the nervous system. They do. They do. Definitely. They're always... If you continue in your usual patterns, if people continue in their usual patterns, they're culturing their nervous system.

[54:25]

They're reinforcing it. And basically this is what we call This is reinforcing your nervous system to get more and more dead. This is called getting old and miserable. This is the usual route, is that you take this nice healthy person and you make them sicker and tighter and more and more happy the older they get. That's why they have these stories about these Zen masters when they're dying, to see, are these guys free even with these old bodies that are like crumbling? Can they still be free? I mean, like, are they as alive as a little kid with a body that's falling apart? And the story is, yeah, they're like totally creative and alive and buoyant and playful. They're like frolicking in the field of birth and death, of old age sickness. They're totally free and happy with this old body.

[55:26]

Whereas, as you know, a lot of old bodies are not only old and decrepit, but they're filled with fear and narrowness and pettiness, you know. They get, not only the body crumple up, but the mind gets smaller and harder and harder to learn. So we are culturing ourselves one way or another, depending on how we're using our mind and body. Depending on what you're meditating on. Yes? How many do you eat a couple times a week? Now you may... Okay. Two little bags twice a week? Okay.

[56:28]

Okay. Two bags a week. So could I. I've had many gaming ideas. One of those was to get away from peanut and anise. Figuring I'm not going to get peanut and anise bearing. Knowing that they're not exactly different. And driving here last night, I knew I needed to get gas. I was running out of gas at the gas station. And I'm thinking, I have the world myself. But then it would be too abrupt. I wouldn't be leading up to the retreat. I wouldn't be easing into the retreat. So I was having this gaining. I was ramping up to the retreat. And so I thought that, and I said, that's ridiculous.

[57:31]

I'm having this gaming idea. You want the peanut M&Ms. And I got the peanut M&Ms, and I ate them on the way here. And the feeling I had upon arriving and driving up was this leap from having had the peanut M&Ms to being here at the retreat. And I felt much better about it, having given up this idea of ramping up to the retreat. I don't know if that's what I'm talking about. So I, you know, I... I think the initial practice of meditating on dependent core rising,

[58:45]

it pretty quickly addresses the issue of being concerned about gain and loss. It pretty quickly addresses how silly it is that we spend so much of our time and actually get emotionally involved with gain and loss, that we actually are hooked into of feeling good when we gain, and feeling bad when we lose. It shows it, it addresses that. And if it doesn't start dampening that, and dampening it means that when we gain we don't get quite as excited, quite as happy, and when we lose we don't get quite as unhappy. Partly it will dampen that quite quickly, But even if it doesn't dampen it, it makes us feel more silly or ashamed that we would get so happy about a gain and so unhappy about a loss.

[60:09]

It kind of like accentuates how silly it is that we get so happy about certain gains and so unhappy about losses. But you can also, without even meditating on this teaching, you could also have a sense of how silly it is. But when you have a sense of how silly it is, that you get really excited about certain gains and really unhappy about certain losses, when you sense how silly that is, without even knowing it, you're opening to the teaching, the Buddhist teachings. So I could tell you, the instruction could be, learn how to feel really silly when you get kind of whomped up about gains and get really depressed about losses. Learn that you should really be kind of like ashamed of yourself But rather than that method, I'm saying meditate on dependent core rising, and then you will become, if you do, continue to get excited in that way.

[61:16]

Like, you know, there's so many... Like, I know this guy who... Somebody told me about this guy who is a Green Bay Packer fan. And he actually is such a fan that he actually is a shareholder. And he just, in a sense, he loves the Green Bay Packers, but really it's more like he loves the Green Bay Packers to win. He loves it when they gain a victory. He actually cannot go to the games. because he gets so upset. He has to wait until the game's over to find out. He can't even watch his football team anymore. And he's also a Buddhist meditator.

[62:24]

So, you know, if you watch a football game and you don't care which side wins, it's not in some ways as exciting. Can you imagine that? So why would you watch the game? Well, maybe you wouldn't. So this attitude is not that good for the economy. Because people aren't going to be watching football games or watching those ads and going out and buying those products that they saw advertised. So certain things might change, the world might change quite a bit if people did this meditation, it would dampen the way we're built.

[63:33]

Because we generally speaking, we think of certain things and we think if those things would happen, we will be happy. But how happy we think we get is not as happy as we will be. Overestimate how happy certain things will make us. And then on the other side, we overestimate how certain things will make us unhappy. Our mind does that. And then the other dimension is that when certain things happen, not so much the things that we we're trying to make happen because we thought they would happen, but just some kind of gain or loss, we get happy about that or sad about that. This meditation will dampen the whole process.

[64:35]

And our activity will become less egocentric. And we will, by meditating in this way, we will gradually stop we will give up wrong action. We won't be so much meditating on worrying, avoiding wrong action. We'll be meditating on the nature of what we're looking at and hearing and seeing. And by this meditation we will give up wrong action. And we will notice that virtuous action arises So, yes. What's your name? Bruce. Bruce, yes. I'm thinking a lot about the things you've been saying, but one of them was the analogy of a persona or a mask.

[65:43]

Yes. And I was thinking of a different analogy of like a constant, as the zodiac signs. For example, you look up at the night sky and you say, well, there's cancer of the crab. Yes. Those things are projections of your mental apparatus. But are you saying that Zen says there are stars, or there is something out there? Basically, what I'm thinking about is, is Zen saying that you can transcend your mental apparatus? You can transcend the way your mind works? One of the teachings is that... Yes. you can transcend your mental apparatus. And transcend... And I hear that. Transcend doesn't mean destroy. Transcend them in the sense, let's say, I'll put it, transcend is one word, another word is you can become free of your mental apparatus.

[66:48]

So, your mental apparatus and your mental physical apparatus, okay, it creates... experiences and you can become free of those experiences. No, our mental apparatus actually is what creates the sense of something outside. Reality is made by mind. Well, experience is made by mind. And reality is the way the mind actually works. So we're talking about the reality of how our body-mind thing actually functions. If you understand that, you become free of the process. If you don't understand it, then you're fighting the process, and that hurts. It hurts to be not in accord with the way things actually work.

[67:52]

But part of our mental apparatus views and understandings of the way things work which are not in accord with the way they do work. So they work somehow? Yeah. So there's a, I guess there's two things I want to go on beyond that. I can think about Zen teachings in this way, I think very, that physical. And then I was thinking about the other sort of more practical application. Yes, yes. It's easy to think about oneself being happy when you gain some peanut M&Ms or when your stock portfolio goes up. Yes. Kind of sad when it goes down. Yes. And then kind of making fun of yourself and seeing that quality.

[68:58]

But then, you know, there are When you gain a child or you lose a child in your family, much more high stakes. Yes. And that leads to happiness or suffering. Or it can. And it sounds like... Same thing. The Zen... Same thing. Exactly. The Zen... All of us here look like, you know, we're pretty... well-fed and educated and such. Yes. But this teaching to people who are in poverty that are really experiencing the pain and the pleasure, I think it would be very hard for them to take the real metaphysical and make it work. Or even us, when we look at a very deep, and instead of stock portfolios, but very close to who we think we are. Yeah, well, if you had a baby, a little baby, or anyway, if you had a child, and if you lost the child, you might feel from that, might be as much as, might be a lot more, might be equally painful to starving.

[70:07]

Right? So, you know, or any of us could get sick a pain situation where the pain we would be experiencing would be extremely, extremely difficult, right? So I was going to mention that one of the members of this community is very sick right now. And one possibility that we had of her coming to Bodhisattva Precepts before she dies. And I thought it would be good for her to come into the community for the ceremony, but she may be too weak to come here. But here's a person who is having a lot of difficulty because they're almost getting very close to death. So if you want to talk about people who are having a hard time, she's kind of, she qualifies, I would think, if somebody is having a hard time. Does that make sense to you? So the question is, can a person in that situation practice?

[71:15]

And the answer is, various answers, but one This person trained for a long time. They could be in any kind of, however you want to dial in difficulty, you can turn the difficulty way up. And the idea is that if you're trained enough, if you have enough training in wisdom, you will be able to bring benefit to people, even when you yourself are really challenged and really having a hard time. If you're talking about people who aren't trained, who are having, who are poor or whatever, all right? Is that what you're talking about? The chances of them being able to practice? Well, not very good. But even if they were, even if you took that same person and gave them food and clothing and gave them all the things, you know, so they'd be well fed and everything, they still would have trouble practicing because they don't know how.

[72:18]

So whether you're healthy like most of the people in this room, or whether you're poor and sick like many people, in fact it will be very difficult to receive teachings and apply them. Period. It's hard to learn how to transform a human being into a wise person. So being rich or poor are factors, but in any case, Right now in this room, in any case, it's hard to learn a new way of seeing that transcends your mental equipment, which are misrepresenting the world. So, if you want to know what teaching will help a different group of people than the people in this room, that's kind of, it's okay, but it's kind of abstract. But I would say that if I was talking to a different group of people, I would talk differently. If I was talking to people who weren't educated the way you people are, well-to-do as you people are, who are sicker than you people are, I would talk differently to them.

[73:26]

And you would too, probably. But I'm talking to you and I'm actually suggesting to you that, and I'm suggesting to myself too, if I get happy when this goes up and I get unhappy when that goes down, I feel, because of my training, I feel kind of like, whoa, my training is not having much effect. I feel kind of embarrassed when those kinds of things push me around. I can see that, and I can do that a little bit. Yeah. When it comes to real things that hit me closer, and I don't have a child that's dying, but Yes. Right. And that's, in some sense, that uncertainty and or the wish to be able to is one of the big motivations for training in Zen Buddhism or whatever kind of Buddhism.

[74:39]

we do have these big things coming. The big things are coming. We are going to get hit hard pretty soon. It's not going to be long before major difficulty is going to come. So for me, you know, heart attack, and you know, to tell you the truth, it wasn't a very bad heart attack, but I had a heart attack. And you know, I went through that heart attack And, you know, I kind of thought, hey, I'm riding this one pretty well. I didn't get real happy. I didn't say, oh, great, I'm having a heart attack. And I didn't get unhappy. I really didn't get unhappy about having the heart attack. And I thought, at certain points in the process, I thought, well, you know, I kind of said goodbye to people as I went into a certain operation. When I said goodbye, I felt pretty good.

[75:43]

I didn't know what else was coming, but up to that point, I thought the practice had served me well, that I went through this process, I wasn't particularly afraid, I basically looked around the world and all I saw was love and a gratitude, and I was ready to go if it was time to go. That was pretty good. Then when I broke my leg, I felt, except for that first thing where I hit the ground, I felt grateful through the process, and I still do. As a matter of fact, it was easier for me to feel grateful in some ways with the newly broken leg than under ordinary circumstances. Because I could see all the dependent core arising in a way coming to, in some sense, support me. But I know that other difficulties may be coming that are much greater than these. For example, a big one would be, how would I The practice that I got Alzheimer's. That's a big one.

[76:46]

How is the meditation going to continue when the brain starts malfunctioning or loses its function? So the idea is to develop a practice which is strong so that you can go through major, intense transformations and not lose sight of the point of it all. which is to be happy and free and love all beings. How can you keep track of that? Through gain and . So I'm just saying, I'm just starting you out with this basic meditation, which is, whatever you've got is a dependent core rising. It doesn't make itself happen. Just listen to that teaching, [...] until it starts to sink into you and you feel the impact of that teaching, which is everything you see is impermanent.

[77:52]

A gain is impermanent, a loss is impermanent. Everything you see is unworthy of confidence. A gain is unworthy of confidence, a loss is unworthy. When a child comes into your life, it's unworthy of confidence. It may not live very long. You may lose this precious being. This teaching is to help us love beings who are reliable. And again, if you look at little children, you can see they're not reliable. They're very fragile. You may lose them any minute. They can die very easily. They're very fragile. And some people take care of their children, but they don't remember that this child is fragile. And because they don't remember it's fragile, they don't take care of it well. So not remembering that things are fragile.

[78:59]

that things are other-dependent, not remembering that things are unstable and impermanent and not worthy of confidence, you don't take good care of them. You take care of them in an unskillful way. But when you remember that things are unstable, unreliable, not worthy of confidence, you start more and more to take care of them in a proper way. And if they get taken away, Then you have the experience of the loss of the thing, or the being. Then you also have a virtuous response to that loss. Something skillful in response to a loss, rather than something unskillful, something wrong. And as you know, some people when they lose things, they do some very bad things when they lose things. They sometimes become very destructive when they lose things. or at the threat of losing something, some people become very destructive.

[80:03]

Whereas if they knew that this thing which is threatened with destruction, when this thing which is threatened with impermanence, if they knew it wasn't threatened with impermanence but actually it was already impermanent, then as the threat starts to manifest, they can have a skillful . So I would like this to be, I want this to be, this instruction to be very practical. And if you can't see how to make it practical, please tell me, because this is a practical, this is a practice, this is a teaching which I would like you to learn how to practice, a teaching which sets the ground for the more profound aspects of the wisdom process. But it immediately sets up the possibility of virtuous responses to children, stock market, M&Ms, cars, health, sickness, meditation practice, all these phenomena are unworthy of confidence.

[81:10]

Practice is unworthy of confidence. If you approach practice, you wish to do Buddhist practice, and you remember that practice is also a dependent core arising, then you'll have a good response to the practice. You will become skillful at the practice when you don't make the practice into something you can rely on. If you put something out there that you can rely on, you won't respond to it skillfully. The way you really respond to things is in this interdependent way. So the question is how to tap into the interdependent way that you actually are interacting in this interdependent way. How can you tap into this creative process? You start by listening to a teaching which tells you that you're in a creative process and that everything you meet has a creative relationship with you

[82:19]

and it's not out there on its own making itself happen. And therefore everything's very fragile, changeable, and you can't get a grip on what's happening. That should help you. I should put it this way. And if you understand, it will make you take better care of these impermanent things. If you think impermanent things are permanent, you won't take good care of them. you won't respond well to them. If you think your car is permanent, if somebody scratches it, you're going to get really upset because somebody has a permanent thing. Rather than, well, of course, of course. Yes?

[83:25]

When you say that the concept is something that is imputed on the thing or things like a person, I'm hearing you say that the concept, which is like a collection of things or a thing, and then the person, which is a collection of things, they don't touch each other, you say? Well, I have an image of you, okay? And the image I have of you doesn't actually ... isn't actually in you. You don't walk around with my image of you in you. Right? I just want to ask my question. Your image comes from My image comes from some things. Yeah, my image arises from some things, yes. It's a dependent core arising too.

[84:26]

But it's an image, you know, of you being a limited thing. It's an image of you as being out there on your own. You appear to be on your own, separate from everything in the room. Okay? And that way my mind can apprehend you. But you're not that way. You appear, the image of you, images look like cut off from, the images seem to be cut off from the rest of the other images. That's what an image is. So, and that's, and by things, we have a way of apprehending them. And they exist that way, but it's a false way. It's not the way they really do. But we think it's true. We agree with things are actually the way they appear. So right now you're looking at me, you have an image of me, and you, and An image of me is not the way I am. Whatever you're thinking of me, I can tell you I'm not that. And vice versa.

[85:32]

And the stuff of you, those don't depend on each other? So I am the basis. upon which your image of me is superimposed. I'm the basis of it. You wouldn't be making the image of me that you're making if I wasn't here. I'm the basis of it. But your image is not in me. But you think it is. That's the mistake. And it's a big mistake. It's the mistake that generates suffering and unhappiness in the world. But I am the basis, and you are the basis of my images of you. The image I'm projecting on you now and the image I've walked away are based on you. Your other dependent character is the basis for my images of you. But my images of you do not reach you. Never do they reach you. Never do they reach you.

[86:33]

But I think actually they are you. It looks like my images of you So I actually have a tendency to strongly adhere to you being the image I have of you. But you're not. However, you are the basis of this image. So it kind of may be difficult to understand something is the basis of an image. But the image of it doesn't reach the thing. If you took away this thing, the image wouldn't have been possible. but the image is not the thing. And in particular, the image of things existing on their own based on something that doesn't exist on its own. So there's nothing about a thing that doesn't exist on its own that touched it all by the idea of the thing not existing.

[87:37]

There's nothing of something that is other dependent. There's nothing about it that can be touched by the idea that it's not other-dependent. They're totally unrelated in that way. The way things are is not touched by the way they aren't. But the way they aren't is the way we imagine them. But the way they aren't is based on the way they are. But again, this is getting into the relationship between those things. It's not so much about meditating on the other dependent. Okay. Yes, was there some hands? Yes. Yes. My sitting practice has been pretty non-existent lately. I was coming through the retreat to get motivation or to be more motivated.

[88:39]

So when I don't look at it that way, I'm not sure... When I take the motivation or when I take the idea that sitting is a good thing, you know, I gain from sitting, I guess to do it for all beings, it's... To do it for all beings, in a sense... sounds pretty good, but the way I'd recommend even more is to do the sitting for the sitting. And, yeah, that's the practice of the sitting which is not egocentric. Turns out, sitting in an egocentric way is better than beating people up in an egocentric way. I say that, okay? That's a value. Okay?

[89:44]

Sitting in an egocentric way is better than feeding poison to darling little children. That's a value. That's just what I think, okay? But sitting with an egocentric motivation is still not really . It's just another selfish thing that the person is doing. So basically there's two kinds of karma. There's good karma and bad karma. There's karma which is clearly harmful, and karma which is not harmful and even seems to be beneficial. So in a egocentric way, in a sense, it's good karma. If you sit trying to get something for yourself, Okay? It seems like actually kind of a good, in terms of like selfish activity, it seems relatively wholesome. But it's not Buddhist meditation. It's selfish meditation, but it's relatively wholesome.

[90:47]

And probably the more you sit trying to gain something for yourself, the more you realize how silly that is. And finally you'll start to sit just for sitting. Start sitting just for sitting, then you're actually doing Zen meditation. It's when you're sitting for sitting. Yeah, you could be sitting... ...trying to get something, and it's possible then you hear that somebody would tell you that you shouldn't be sitting to get something for yourself. You might hear that and you might think, hmm, well, I happen to be sitting here, so maybe I'll just sit for the sake of sitting, just give that a try. And you might notice that that feels even more appropriate than the other way you were sitting. Being concerned about that is egoistic.

[91:50]

Not being concerned about being able to tell whether you're being egotistical is not egotistical. When you're sitting just for sitting, you don't really worry about whether you're tricking yourself or not. You're concentrating on sitting for sitting, not being sure that you're enlightened or something. When you're sitting for sitting, maybe the person who's sitting there is totally deluded and confused. Okay. If that's what she is, that's what she is. I'm busy here with the sitting for sitting. Just like you don't get too upset about somebody who's sitting in Canada with a gaining idea. Upset that there's somebody sitting at the Margaret Austin Center with a gaining idea. Just like you don't get terribly upset about somebody sitting in Canada with egocentric motivation in her practice, you wouldn't get so much upset about your own.

[92:58]

Just like you're not up about trying to figure out whether somebody in Canada is like tricking herself in her practice, it would be the same with yourself. Because you're concentrating on something else. You're concentrating on doing something just for itself without trying to gain anything. And you could be tricking yourself You could come and tell me, you could say, well, I think I'm actually not practicing with no gaining idea. That's what I thought. What do you think? And I could tell you, I could give you a response. Then you could watch how you react to my response when I tell you you're totally hung up on your own gaining idea. And if you responded like saying, hmm, that's interesting, that would be kind of like, that seemed like not too much of a gaining idea. And I would say, you know, you're still hooked. And you say, Maybe you're right. But, you know, you say, I feel more and more free the more you accuse me of being hung up. And then finally I would agree with you probably.

[94:02]

But anyway, there is the importance of verification, but the verification should be the verification that you're no longer concerned about, you know, how you're doing. You're only concerned with how's the Buddha way doing. You know, the fact that you haven't been so upset about sitting... That's what I said. The fact that you haven't been upset about not sitting is actually probably a fruit of... Sitting's not supposed to... We don't sit so that we feel miserable when we're not sitting. We're sitting so that we feel happy no matter what we're doing. You're not there? Well, you should be there. So yeah, the practice is not to make yourself feel more and more miserable when you're not doing the practice.

[95:08]

It's to make you happier. If you're not doing the practice, you're doing the practice. Yes. Yeah, right. And the heart, you say the heart, and what I'm saying the heart is, is actually It really is, is that your heart is made by things other than itself. Yeah. Right. Yes.

[96:16]

Regret's not necessarily a hindrance. When you regret having done something unskillful, then it can be helpful. Regret is pure fantasy? Well, regret has other dependent character, and it has a fantasy character, and it has a thoroughly established character. Everything, regret, your body, your heart, everything has these three characteristics. So regret has one aspect of regret, the idea of regret, superimposed on the actual dependent core rising of regret. But actually your idea of regret doesn't really reach the regret. And regret is also impermanent and unstable and not worthy of confidence.

[97:24]

So if you see the regret that way, you won't care too much about it, and you won't care too little about it. You'll just say, I regret. I regret having done that unskillful thing. And that's a wholesome regret. If you regret not having done something cruel to somebody, if you passed up an opportunity to be cruel and you regretted that, that would be an unwholesome regret. If you do something good for somebody and you regret having done it, like sometimes, you know, somebody, I don't know, if they give you too much change at the grocery store and you tell them that they gave you too much and you give it back to them, and they say, God, thanks a lot. That's really kind of you. And then you walk out the door and you say, that was stupid to give them the money back. That regret is unhealthy.

[98:27]

but the regret of them giving you too much change and you noticing it and walking out the door and not giving back to them, that regret is healthy. So the next time you get overpaid, it's more likely you say, this time I'm going to give it back. The little bit of gain of that extra money is not that, you know, it's not, You're not going to get into that. That's not really reliable. And then you don't give the money back because you think that's reliable, you know, that that's going to give you something. But in fact, you do the skillful thing because you think it's going to get you something, but because you realize that doing the unskillful thing is not going to get you something you want. or you don't think you're going to get something out of it, and then you don't do the unskillful thing.

[99:33]

This to me that this might be something that would be rather, that such considerations might be rather practical. That you come in, that there's situations like this quite often, like with M&Ms. When you look at the M&M and you think, if you think about it now, this is another dependent phenomenon. This is unstable, impermanent, not worthy of confidence. And eating them also is not worthy of confidence, unstable and so on. You look at that, you know, you're actually meditating while looking at these M&Ms. I mean, you're actually like you're actually practicing the Buddha way with these M&Ms. It's not so much that you're trying to control yourself, you know, like, stop, stop, don't do it. It's not that kind of thing.

[100:39]

You're actually approaching understanding the reality of your life by bringing that teaching to the situation of these M&Ms. You're stopping to listen to the teaching at the moment of looking at those things. and seeing what it feels like to think about those teachings while you look at the M&Ms, and see how it goes. And if your hand somehow by some habit reaches out for the M&M and picks it up, you watch that process, you watch that. And you might stop, but you might put it in, and you might chew it while continuing to meditate. I don't know how many times you would eat the M&M, though, while simultaneously doing that meditation. You might not eat the whole bag.

[101:41]

But you might also, what also might happen is this big impulse would come and you just suddenly pick up the whole bag and just pour it all in at once. You know? And you just feel all that in there and just go kind of like, yeah, this is what it's about, you know? And then you might just gently spit them all out into the garbage. Because you realize how that's not really the way you want to live. You might exaggerate it just to make clear to yourself that you really don't want to eat 35 M&M's in one gulp. Okay? You don't want to do that. The more you want to eat one or two at a gulp. But when you actually do one or two, in that case you can meditate while you're doing it, you might stop. Or you might say, and you might taste what they're actually like, and you might say, you might do that.

[102:49]

Who knows? I don't know what you'll do. But I'm suggesting to you that letting this teaching impact you transforms your there will be a moral transformation in your conduct if you keep listening to this teaching and applying it to driving, walking, talking, eating, and so on. There will be a moral, ethical transformation of your being. And this will set the stage for the deeper realizations which will make possible the incredible activities of an enlightened being in the difficulties, in the big difficulties of life, like really being sick and old and dying. So we've been going through this, and that seems like a long time.

[104:17]

So I would, I would appreciate if you have more questions about how to do this meditation. And you can decide this afternoon whether you want to consider these teachings while you're sitting, or whether you just want to let them go and just sit quietly and just let your thinking, just let your discourse go and practice tranquility this afternoon. That's fine with me. And then this evening we can, if you want to, we can bring up these teachings again and you can bring up more questions if you have them about how to apply these teachings to your moment-by-moment even though you may not be ready to do that, you may be ready to ask questions about how to do it.

[105:28]

And if you do feel ready to do it, but don't feel ready to do it in your sitting practice, you might be able to do it during the other times of this afternoon, like when you're going to lunch, you could maybe do it while you're eating, And when you're doing work, or taking a walk or whatever, in those situations you might be able to listen to this teaching, to be mindful of this teaching. What do you find out about, is there any change in the way you move in the world when you listen to this teaching, when you remember this teaching? See what you find out if you practice that kind of mindfulness in your moment-by-moment experience. And then you can put it aside when you're sitting if you want to, of course. And just put everything aside when you're sitting and just enjoy a very calm afternoon if you'd like to.

[106:32]

Unequally penetrate every being and place with the true merit of this way. Beings are...

[106:56]

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