I'm a little embarrassed to say something about my own life right off, but I just wanted to say that yesterday was the 9th of August, 1997. That's not about me exactly, but It sort of is because 27 years ago, that day, I became ordained as a Zen priest. And I mention it particularly today because when I was ordained I was 27. So yesterday was the day when I had spent exactly half of my life as a Zen priest and half of my life not being a Zen priest.

[01:12]

But now, one day later, I've spent most of my life being a Zen priest. So this won't happen again like yesterday. I won't be half and half ever again. So it was a very poignant day for me to think about that day 27 years ago when Suzuki Roshi ordained me and shaved my head. And I thought about what was the difference between the 27 years before and the 27 years after. I thought about that, reflecting on the two sides, the two faces of the ordination. And many wonderful memories came back as I was doing that reflection.

[02:34]

And one of them was when I was, from the time I was about two or three until I was six, I lived in a neighborhood and there were lots of kids in the neighborhood, lots of girls and boys. Most of the girls were older than me, except for my little sisters. I mostly knew them as babysitters. I didn't play with the older girls much. And most of the boys were older than me, too. There were lots of older boys. And I was, I would say, very blessed because those boys were always kind to me. They never beat me up. They never... I mean, I knew I was a lot smaller than them, but they never wanted to rub it in.

[03:43]

They never wanted to, you know, make a point of me being smaller. They were really kind to me. They used to wrestle with me and things like that, but they always pretended like I won. I knew that they were kind of pretending, but it was still fun. I was like their little brother. I was the littlest boy. And I remember one particular time, the big boys made a tree house. And they made a tree house up in a tree, and it was so incredibly high. And I was fairly adventurous like the other boys, but I never even dreamed of climbing up in that treehouse that was so high, and they didn't want me to either. And I thought yesterday morning, I wish I could go back and see how high that treehouse really was. But that's one of the things I won't be able to do, I guess.

[04:45]

I think it maybe was 50 feet high. I mean, really. Really. This room is 16 feet high. Maybe not the 50 feet. But it might have been like twice as high as this room. That would be 32 feet. It might have been that high. Can you imagine how high that is for a little boy? Or a little girl? There were some little girls with me down there looking up too. It seemed like 100 feet high, I thought. But I guess probably it was 32 feet. Maybe 50. I wish I could see. So one difference between 54 and 5 is... is like that. For the last... Almost a year now I've been concentrating on studying and discussing with the community the teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, which is the fourth of the Four Noble Truths.

[06:01]

And in particular for the last six months, or seven or eight months, I've been particularly concentrating on the teachings of karma and meditation on karma. And some of you have been in on these discussions, but some of you have not, right? So some people are new to this. And today actually I wanted to, in a sense, go beyond that kind of meditation. And I feel a little uneasy doing so because some of the people here have not been here for the last year, for all the talks. I mean I was hardly even here. But I think I'm going to go ahead and talk about another dimension of meditation with a little review.

[07:03]

And if the review gets too long, it'll just be review and I'll never get into the new material. Not today, anyway. Maybe in question and answer I will. Because there's a limit of, what do you call it, attention span? Blood sugar drops and so on. There she goes. Our helper. Good luck. A woman has just left the room to work on her car. Or so I think. which reminds me of a joke I just saw in The New Yorker.

[08:17]

This guy's kind of sprawled out on a bar, and he says to the bartender, do you have any idea who I think I am? Yep. So in terms of overview, the overview is actually to look at the first aspect of the Eightfold Path, which is called Right View or sometimes Comprehensive View. And there's two kinds of right view. One kind of right view is dualistic right view.

[09:21]

Right view where you can tell, you know, where you can tell, for example, this is right view and this is wrong view. That's dualistic right view. This is right view, this is wrong view. Right view is... the core of Right View is that any acts done by a person who thinks she's independent of other people has consequence. Actions done by someone who thinks that she's an independent operator are called karma. These are dualistic acts in the sense of I do them, you don't. And the right view is to recognize that any acts done from that deluded point of view of an independently existing self, that all those actions based on that delusion have consequence.

[10:38]

That's mundane, dualistic right view. There's other aspects of right view, but that's the most important thing. In other words, actions that I commit by myself have consequence. That's right view. Wrong view is what I do doesn't have consequence, doesn't matter. That's wrong view. And right view is to see that one is wrong view and one is right view, and also Once you see what Right View is, Right View is to cultivate that mundane, dualistic Right View. And you cultivate it by paying attention to any actions that you personally, independently perpetrate. To watch yourself as you do it, to see what the consequences are, and to evolve through that meditation. So that's why I've been talking about how to do that meditation for a long time.

[11:46]

And that meditation practice is actually quite difficult. Because as you watch yourself doing karmic activity, you see many difficult things. I mean, you see many things which are hard to look at. You see some of the things you do, and you feel uncomfortable about what you see yourself doing sometimes. Now sometimes you see yourself doing what are called skillful actions or wholesome actions, and those lead to generally happiness, worldly happiness. And sometimes you see yourself do things unskillfully, act unskillfully, unwholesomely, and you see that those lead to worldly misery. But even when you see yourself do things which are fairly skillful or even very skillful, as long as you're doing them independently of other beings, as long as you're not doing them together with all beings, even though they're good and make you happy as a result, this happiness is always surrounded by anxiety.

[13:03]

You're never really at peace as long as you're not working together with everybody. even when you do the most, even when you or even when I do the most skillful independent action, as long as I do it by myself, cut off from you, I'm still a little anxious. My heart is not completely at peace as long as there's any dualism in the activity of my life. This is what you see when you meditate on karma. Of course, if you're doing things unskillfully, then you still have that anxiety, plus the misery of the bad results you get for your unskillfulness. So that's even worse. Now what I've been proposing, which I still say, is that as you meditate

[14:08]

on your karma, to watch yourself very carefully as you act and see how it works and meditate on what your intentions are and where they come from and how you understand yourself and how that process works, your understanding evolves. The situation clarifies and you gradually start to see the truth. The first truth you see is that if you have attachment to an individual self and act from that attachment, you're uncomfortable. If you have an independent self, you're uncomfortable. And then in order to cope with that discomfort, which you think is wrong, you act, and the action perpetuates the process and deepens the habit of feeling that things are off and thinking that you can do something about it, doing it, getting results which may continue to keep it being off.

[15:22]

So as you meditate on that process, you gradually start to understand. And I would say, and I still say, that eventually you come to see that this delusion, which this is all based on, is really just a delusion. And this delusion isn't really the way things are. It isn't really so that you can act independently. But you can think that you do. You can think that you're somebody who can do things by herself. You can think that, but that's a delusion. As you understand more and more that that's a delusion, you start to wake up because, in fact, a Buddha understands it's a delusion. If you understand it's a delusion with your whole body, you wake up. What I'd like to mention today is that that last part there where you start to understand that it's a delusion, that's when the practice liberates you.

[16:32]

In other words, when you shift from believing that you can operate independently to meditating how you're operating together with all beings, when you see how you're operating and acting together with all beings, that vision is the vision which actually is liberation. The world where I do things on my own, where I'm independent of you, I can conceive of the world where I'm independent of you. I can conceive of that world. Matter of fact, I do. I have this conception of me being something and you being something. And that I do things and you do things. I can conceive of that.

[17:36]

And if I believe that conception, that's delusion. But at least, even though it's delusion, at least it's conceivable. That's one advantage of it. You can know the world of delusion. You can grasp it and play with it and get in trouble. That's the nice thing about it. The world where you work together with all beings and all action comes through that concerted life It turns out that one of the drawbacks of it, in a sense, is that it's inconceivable. You can't conceive of how it happened. You can conceive of how it happens, but that's not how it happens. That's just a conception of it. Meditating on how untenable the limited world of conception is and how operating on a belief in your conceptions

[18:42]

really is painful, helps to get you ready to be willing to let go of that world and enter a world where you can no longer do things by yourself. I don't know if you're ready to enter that world or not, but I'm going to start talking about it now a little bit. And again, when I talk about it, my talk about it is conceptual. So it's not really it that I'm talking about. But yet I'm kind of knocking on the door and saying to all of us, shall we enter? the inconceivable, super mundane right view, the view that will actually set us free, the non-dualistic meditation.

[19:52]

So let's see how it goes. Here we go. So, the... the Dharma, the truth, which awakens us, which we call Buddhadharma. The Dharma of awakening cannot be known by a person. In other words, it can't be known by an independent person. Independent persons can know some things. And what they know they can even think is true and then make what they know into delusions. Or they can just know things but not attribute reality to them. So then they know, well this is just an idea.

[21:01]

Individual people can know that they're an individual person. That they have an idea like that. We can know these things but we can't know the reality which liberates us. Not as long as we're an individual person, we can't. We have to give up our individual self in order to understand the Buddhadharma. So when we give up our attachment to our individual self, then we do know the Buddha Dharma and we are awake. So we call a person who has given up her attachment to the self and all other attachments, we call such a person an awake person, a buddha.

[22:07]

It's not really a person. Such an awakened being, a Buddha, such a being does know Buddhadharma. But it's inconceivable to be a Buddha. We can think about it, but the Buddha, the awakening, is not what we conceive of it to be. So I think some of you may already have heard about this koan that's floating around the Bay Area now.

[23:12]

It's, what is it? How come Buddha cannot vacuum in the corners of the room? You know? Some of you know probably, right? And some of you don't, right? How many people don't know? Come on, admit it. Ah, quite a few. Right? Well, the reason why Buddha can't vacuum in the corner is because Buddha has no attachments. So there are certain disadvantages of being Buddha. So what is Buddha is inconceivable.

[24:30]

And so now I say something about it. It's pure presence. Buddha is pure presence. In the midst of all the things that are going on in life, everything that's happening in life, all the people and plants and animals and mountains and rivers, They're all just landscape, wonderful, glorious landscape surrounding the pure presence, which doesn't reject or grasp anything that's going on. and all the things that are going on in life, all the thoughts which one can have, do not help or hinder that pure presence which realizes awakening.

[25:53]

The awakening happens by the power of awakening itself. All the things that happen, it's not by their power or by how you get them or reject them that you awaken. It's by this very big-mindedness and pure-minded presence that doesn't dabble or negotiate with what's going on that awakening happens. And that kind of non-greedy, non-angry, non-gaining, non-losing presence It's that presence by which this presence happens.

[27:07]

And that presence doesn't cause enlightenment, doesn't cause awakening, it is awakening. All around this presence are all the conceptions that are possible in the world. None of those conceptions touch it. None of those conceptions apply to it. No matter what you think, that's not what it is. And nothing you do or think makes it happen. And yet, it is our nature all the time. No matter what you think, it doesn't help or hurt this.

[28:21]

But that doesn't mean that what you think is bad or good. As a matter of fact, every thought is itself actually already awakening. It's just that thoughts don't contribute to awakening. No thoughts contribute to it. But all thoughts are actually already it. It's just that the nature of thoughts is that we seek elsewhere than the thoughts. We split the thoughts into two. The dualistic mind makes the thought something that has an effect.

[29:27]

And we do not believe that what's happening as it's happening is where awakening must occur. So we seek elsewhere and we try to do something to set ourselves free. But even if we take this thought, whatever thought you have right now, and try to make that thought into something, into awakening, we seek elsewhere. But if you have a thought right now and you don't seek elsewhere, you don't try to get anything from the thought by which you would be free. You have just given up your dualistic powers

[30:39]

and you realize the pure presence which doesn't try to use what's happening for anything. And I say you, but take away you and just say when there is a thought and there's no exploitation of the thought no getting rid of it so that we can be free, and no using it so we can be free, but letting it be what it is. That's the way Buddha handles a thought. That's pure presence. And no one can do that pure presence. The pure presence is the non-manipulative, non-attachment with which all phenomena coexist. All Buddhas, in past, present and future, practice together with all living beings.

[31:59]

No matter what thought we have, no matter what thought they have, all Buddhas are practicing together with us, with them. Right now, no matter what thoughts you have, all Buddhas in past, present, and future are practicing with you right now. And it is the practice, it is the practicing together right now, it is you and your experience right now practicing together with all Buddhas that is the practice of Buddha. The practice of Buddha is not the practice you're doing. The practice of Buddha is not the practice that a Buddha's doing.

[33:08]

The Buddha's practice is practicing with you. And not just with you, but with all beings. The practice that is happening between this person who has no attachments and the other persons who have no attachments. That practice is the practice which knows Buddhadharma. An ancestor said, from the first time you meet a teacher, just wholeheartedly sit upright and thus drop away body and mind.

[34:12]

From the first time you meet Buddha, just sit upright. And by just sitting when you meet Buddha, you drop away body and mind. Dropping away body and mind, you enter the practice together with the Buddhas. All your ideas of body, all your ideas of mind, by which you think that you can practice on your own, are dropped. And it's just you together with Buddha. actually with all Buddhas. And therefore, you're in the practice, not just together with this Buddha and all Buddhas, but you're in the practice together with all beings and the entire earth.

[35:18]

in this meeting between unattached person and unattached person, between one person who does not believe, who is not fooled by their independence, by their apparent independence, and another person who's not fooled by her apparent independence. In that meeting, everything's still going on. the world of karma is still flying around. And it isn't as though you're not attentive to it or don't notice what's going on. Matter of fact, in this presence you're even clearer than you were before when you were really clear. When you get really clear about how your karma works As you get clearer and clearer, you get closer and closer to realizing that you don't do it.

[36:57]

When you finally give up completely the idea that you're doing what's happening, you see your karma very clearly as not your karma. And still, activity appears and disappears. So the practice of watching carefully everything you do does not stop. It's just that you now watch carefully what you don't do. You watch carefully the actions which are done with everybody rather than the actions which you do by yourself. You see the world of freedom from karma simultaneously with the world of bondage to karma. And because you're pure and still and not manipulating, you don't even manipulate the world by preference.

[38:07]

You don't even prefer freedom over bondage. if there's the slightest preference of freedom over bondage, you're in bondage. Buddha wants all people to understand and become free without preferring freedom over bondage. Because all Buddhas are practicing together with all beings who are in bondage and with all beings who are free. The practice of Buddha is to practice together with all beings, to practice together with all Buddhas and to practice together with all beings who are in bondage. That's the practice of Buddha. You do not prefer a different world

[39:15]

when you're in this place, in this way of pure presence. You don't, as we say, move a single particle of dust. And because you don't move or manipulate at all, awakening is realized. And because you don't move a particle of dust, because you personally do not move a particle of dust, the inconceivable activity of all Buddhas together with all beings and all mountains and rivers comes through you and mountains start walking. Forget about moving dust particles. Mountains start moving. Planets rotate and all beings wake up. Not by your power, not by Buddha's power, but by the practice of Buddha, which is working together with all beings.

[40:26]

And this is a short explanation of our practice of just sitting. When you meet the Buddha in this way, you just sit. and drop away body and mind. Which means you just sit and stop manipulating, stop quibbling, stop complaining, stop blaming. You drop away all that wonderful, all those wonderful accessories. You drop away all those wonderful equipments. And you're totally useful and you can't do a thing. All Buddhas, all beings can use you, but you can't do anything anymore. You personally, individually can't do a thing. You can't stand up. You can't sit down. You can't walk. You can't talk. You can't do anything.

[41:31]

But everything can happen in this life together with all Buddhas and all beings together. And this comes back down to the most ordinary existence. And any activity, basically, can be this Buddha activity. So one example is, it's like meeting someone and not being concerned about how they look. It's like that. They're smiling, they're frowning. They like you, they don't like you. It's like meeting them and not being concerned about that.

[42:36]

They approve you, they don't approve you. They do approve you, don't approve you. That's part of the landscape. surrounding your meditation. Huge bleachers all around you all the time, full of sentient beings. Big sections of them frowning at you. Big sections of them smiling at you, clapping for you, cheering you on. And then other sections where it's mixed. And all the various subtleties of how they're looking at you and judging you. This is the world surrounding you. This is there. This is there. You don't even think about it. You don't care about it. Now, simultaneously, you may be happy to hear, there's somebody who does care about it, who's really concerned about the slightest difference in a person's lips. and the angle of the jaw and the slant of the eye.

[43:41]

There's still discernment of that and awareness of that and even caring about it. But again, that caring is out there in the bleachers. At the same time that somebody's busy caring about how things are going for this person, this appearance of a person, at the same time that there's that concern, there's also this pure presence which is not concerned. One of the first stories I heard when I came to Zen Center was about a Japanese Zen teacher after the Second World War was over.

[44:55]

And there were lots of rich American service people over in Japan and a lot of poor Japanese Zen masters. And some of the Zen masters made friends with some of these rich service people. And one of them made friends with an admiral. The admiral came to the Zen teacher occasionally for tea and discussion of the Buddhist teaching. And he would bring the Zen monk, he would bring him cakes, which probably weren't the best thing for him to eat because that's probably all he was eating, but at least it was something to eat. The Japanese were very poor at the end of the war. So when the admiral would come, the Zen teacher would say, Give me the cakes. And I always thought, huh, is this conduct befitting a Zen priest? When I say always, I mean when I first heard that story, it bothered me.

[45:58]

As the years went by, I became more comfortable with it. And today I'm very comfortable with it. Today I think it's so wonderful that a Zen priest can say, give me the cakes. Did you bring me cakes? Can I have them? Now there's a limit, of course. As my teacher once said, speaking of another teacher, he said, he's too human. You've got to get sort of just the right amount of human there. But while being human, while being a human person, there still can be pure presence. There still can be all Buddhas practicing with this person. There's still somebody who really doesn't care whether the Admiral likes him or not. And that person is practicing together with this person who is concerned about getting the cakes.

[47:11]

Practices with that person. So you may be a person sometimes, I may be a person sometimes, that is concerned about how the people feel about me, who does care about what people think of me, or what they look like. I may be like that. That may, that phenomenon may arise. But can I practice with that person? Or can there be a practice with that person? Buddha is practicing with that person. Together with that person. Never not there practicing with that person. And if that person would just sit still in who he was or who he is and not prefer to be anybody else or seek elsewhere for the solution of his humanness.

[48:18]

He would be just exactly like the Buddha, who does not search for this person to be otherwise, but always comes to meet the person as they are, The Buddha Dharma is not realized just by the Buddhas practicing together with us, no matter what we are. It's also us practicing together with Buddha, no matter what we are. And never seeking, or at least not, I shouldn't say never, but right now, in the moment, not seeking elsewhere for another state to be in to meet Buddha. And this is tough. Imagine now, if you now have an appointment with Buddha, and it's going to be quite soon, so you don't have time to adjust your glasses or change your makeup or straighten your collar. Don't you want to wait for a second and get a little ready? Don't you want to present somebody a little different from this?

[49:24]

Do you want, like, this present person, the one who's going to meet the Buddha? It's hard to just let it be this. And it's not that this is the thing to meet the Buddha, it's the willingness to let this be the thing that meets the Buddha. The Buddha's not waiting for you to get better looking before the Buddha meets you. The Buddha's already ready to meet you. Are you ready to meet Buddha? Are you ready to just wholeheartedly sit still and drop everything and just be who you are and meet Buddha and realize the practice that all Buddhas do together with all beings in the entire world? Are you ready for that? Without any more last minute details that you want to finish off just beforehand? My wife heard some kind of story on the radio the other day about a Greyhound bus driver.

[51:02]

Did anybody else hear that story? He did? It's about this Greyhound bus driver, and he's been a Greyhound bus driver for quite a while, right? He's been a Greyhound bus driver long enough so that some of the young ladies who he used to drive to school are now grandmothers. Some of these young girls who used to drive to school are now grandmothers and now he helps them off the bus. Maybe he was a young bus driver once. Anyway, he really likes his job. And he took a vacation recently, a two week vacation. And after a week of vacation, he came down to breakfast one morning and he had his bus driver's uniform on. He said to his wife, it just feels so good to have this on. So I don't know this guy, but I think what encourages people is to hear that it's possible

[52:16]

you know, to practice together with all beings in any form. That all Buddhas practice together with us no matter what form we're in, and that we, no matter what form we're in, can practice together with all beings. Buddha's not about us all, I don't know what, getting 16 feet tall and turning gold. Buddha's about the spirit that's willing to practice with everybody the way they are now. And willing to practice being who you are right now. To receive Buddha's compassion which says, this is where you practice from, right here. Not there, not later. Don't seek elsewhere. Just sit right now. Give up all alternatives. Give up all recourse. give up all seeking elsewhere, and just be who you are right now.

[53:18]

And that's not it completely. Practice together with all Buddhas, meet all Buddhas, and practice with all beings that aren't yet realized Buddhas. And join all Buddhas in practicing together with them. Enter that inconceivable practice which is very concrete. It's inconceivable, and it's simply always right here, without moving a particle of dust, an eyelash, a curl, or a drop of saliva. It's exactly this moment, together with all Buddhas and all beings in the Great Earth. This is what we call just sitting. It's actually not difficult.

[54:31]

It's just hard to understand though. It's inconceivable. But it's not really difficult because it's already what's happening. Just sort of like get with the program. The other kind of practice is in some ways easier to understand, but it's harder to do, to actually keep track of yourself all the time and watch your actions. It gets very tiring. This way you don't have to do anything. Matter of fact, you can't. It's just that it's hard to understand. So how do you understand what it would be like to really feel okay about practicing with what's happening right now and not go to the Zen Center to practice? To practice right where you are. But maybe you get a glimmering of this light, do you?

[55:36]

So I have some songs about this. It's hard to decide. Of course, every song applies to this talk, right? The one I wanted to do was something like, I don't know the whole song, but it goes... There were birds in the sky, but I never heard them singing. No, I never heard them at all, till there was you. That's the one I wanted to do. But I don't know the words, so if somebody knows the words, please tell me. I want to do that sometime. That's sort of, you see how that applies? You don't see it? You in this story is all Buddhas and all beings. Until you meet all Buddhas and all beings, you don't really hear the Virgin in the sky.

[56:46]

You think you do, but that's just what you think. So here's another song which I did before, I think it also applies. It's called Side by Side. So you know who you're side by side with, right? All Buddhas and all sentient beings, this is who you're side by side with. All of them, not most of them. No exclusions, no exclusions, you're side by side, all of them, even you know who. The one exception, you know the one exception, at least one exception. Some people have more than one exception. And they hold that on religious grounds, can you believe it? The author of this is kind of a funny name, it's called Harry Woods. Can you imagine? Oh, we ain't got a barrel of money.

[57:59]

Maybe we're ragged and funny, but we'll travel along singing a song side by side. Oh, we don't know what's coming tomorrow Maybe it's trouble and sorrow But we'll travel along Sharing our load Side by side Through all kinds of weather It doesn't matter at all. No, excuse me. Through all kinds of weather. What if the sky should fall? Just as long as we're together. It doesn't matter at all. When they've filled their troubles and parted, we'll be the same as we started, just a-travelin' along, singin' a song, side by side.

[59:03]

I didn't wear my glasses today, just so I can see who you are. Oh wow, I missed quite a few. I didn't know you were here. Thank you for listening even though I didn't know who you were. All right. Yes. Do you have a question? What is it? I understood what you said when you were saying that thoughts do not contribute to being awake, but thought is already awake. Yeah, right. When you said that, is thought already awake because it's a manifestation of pure presence or consciousness?

[60:18]

Is that why thought is in itself awake? I'm not sure I understood that part. So I'm sorry, I forgot your name. What is it? Paula. Paula, did you give me the song about only you? Thanks. So Paula asked, I said that what you think one way or another doesn't really contribute to awakening. She understands that part. And then I said that thought itself is awakened, is awake, or is realization. And then she had a theory about explaining why it is or how it is that thought is awakening. Right? I was trying to understand what it was. When you said that, why would that be my theory?

[61:18]

Uh-huh, right. So it's like, it's not like the thought has some particular quality such that it is awakening. I mean, you could try to make a kind of a story, a good story about thought, any thought, all thoughts about ... that would show how it is that they're awakening. What I mean is that it's not just that the thought itself is realization, but the thought itself also includes that somebody lets it be the thought itself. So it's not like things are over there by themselves, having something about them that makes them realization. It's that everything participates and supports the thing to be itself, too.

[62:21]

So in some ways your thoughts aren't realization. If you have a thought and you seek elsewhere, then it's like the thought isn't realization. But when you leave it alone, then it is. So it's not like the thought has the thing by itself, but the thought in relationship to everything, it is a focus for everything. But everything in cooperation with the thought is also how the thought is realization. But this is just talk. And when you practice that way, then it's not just talk. When you really appreciate what you've got on your plate right now, without getting into how come this deserves your appreciation, but just that you're that way with it. It's like then the thought is realization. You don't make it that way, and you can't take it away from it, and yet when you are that way with it, its Buddha nature is revealed.

[63:33]

But anyway, it doesn't have anything over on its side that makes it that way. It's the practice together with it somehow then it becomes realization. So you take any phenomena in concert with non-dualistic meditation or non-gaining meditation and that phenomena then is an occasion of realization. That's the basic amazing proposition. It's kind of a little... It's amazing. All four of those came up at once. There's Raphael, and what's your name? Huh? Jacob, and Robin, and... Okay. I don't know who was first. You had one more over there? Okay. So let's... And there's another one. So let's just work this way. What... the tantric Buddhist nonduality as opposed to some other kind of Buddhist nonduality?

[64:51]

Well, off the top of my experience right now, I don't have some sense of different kinds of nonduality. I don't know how to come up with anything to say about that. Do you? Well, it's interesting. Last night I was looking at all the different teachings and Buddhist teachings and there's just many different teachings and I was just starting to feel a little overwhelmed by all the information to the point where I found where there's the non-duality, and then you see tantric practice just dissolving, like, oh my, tantric mind. I was just curious, you were talking about non-duality, but she was curious about what she saw.

[66:08]

Tantric, that's the lima. That's the question. Nothing's coming. Good thing we found them. I wanted to follow on with the discussion you were having with her, because I was having a little trouble, you know, kind of quite grasping the point about thought through. But in your answer to her, it reminded me of a lecture you gave, I think, three months ago, where you talked about there's a story that there are no Buddhist teachers in China, but there is Buddhism in China. And what I understood you to say at that time... Just a second.

[67:12]

She said there's a story about some Zen teacher says, don't you know that in all of China there's no teachers of Zen? And then the monk comes and says, well what about all these monasteries where people are assembling and practicing together and there's teaching being given? And then the master says, I don't say there's no Zen in China, just that there's no teachers. Now, I just want to point out that to say, I don't say there's no Zen is not the same as saying there is Zen. Okay? So I didn't say there aren't teachers and there are Zen. It's just I do say there aren't teachers and I don't say there's not Zen. Okay? Okay, so, yes, sir? You, that's... is that Buddhism was a dynamic thing.

[68:22]

Buddhism is a dynamic thing. No, Buddhism is more like it's a dynamic, not even a dynamic thing. If you make Buddhism into a thing, even a dynamic thing, then you've got a thing. But you don't have Buddhism. So, Buddhism is not a thing. All right? And you're not a thing either, by the way. So Buddhism is like you. Buddhism is dynamic, non-dual, and not a thing. But you can make yourself into a thing, and you can make Buddhism into a thing, but then you don't have Buddhism and you don't have yourself. But we do that. So we accept that. So all around us, we make things. Okay, we make the things. If it wasn't for us imputing thinghood to things, there wouldn't be things. But we do, so let's accept that we do that. But then, let's just let it go at that. You've made these things.

[69:22]

Now don't play with them anymore. Just sit there and be present and learn from what you've done in the world you've created. Okay? Pardon? Well, you do make thought a thing, but just accept you made something which isn't a thing into a thing. We do that, so we accept. We do make the world into a bunch of things. We impute selves, we impute thinghood all over the place. We do that. This is part of our deal. We don't try to get rid of that. and annihilate that. We just try to find the place in the middle of this world we've created, so we understand this is just scenery, which is self-propelled scenery. And we're in the middle, and we learn from it all. And we practice with it all, and it all practices with us. And we also take credit for the fact that we all make the things ourselves.

[70:23]

Each person, each of us, imputes ourselves. to what's actually not thinghood. To try to stop that would be unrealistic and unhealthy. But to learn how it happens is realistic, because it is happening. To study what's happening is realistic, because you've got it going on anyway. Plus also, if you understand it, you'll become free of it. This thing of this thing, how we make ourselves separate. Don't try to deny it. And you're next. I'd like to try and apply your teaching to a very unpleasant recent experience. A friend who was very dear to me accused me of about to do something that he suspected was totally out of

[71:25]

my appearance. It wasn't my motive at all. And I was trying to literally deign to create that impression. And it became very, very impressive. And I felt totally helpless. I wasn't quite sure that you felt this morning. I wasn't quite sure what what to do with that experience, how to correct that thought that had nothing to do with this active mind. So how do you correct other people's impression of you? Is that what you're saying? When it's not correct? How do you make things less unpleasant? Is that what you're asking? How do you make things less unpleasant? Well, you can change it.

[72:30]

What do you want it to be? That was kind of like the summary of it. But do you have a better summary than how do you make things less unpleasant? The other possibility is how do you change someone's opinion of you? That's another possible. Do you want to suggest something else? Those are good ones. Even if those aren't yours, we could have those. How do you make things less unpleasant and how do you get people to change their opinion of you? Do you want to have another one? Pardon? How do you correct people's errors in judgment, especially about yourself? How about taking the one of how do you correct people's errors in judgment? Are people making any errors in judgment around here? I mean, yeah, I'm not talking about you.

[73:34]

Have you ever seen anybody make an error in judgment? And have you ever wanted to correct their error in their judgment? When people sit in this meditation hall, Sometimes I walk around and touch their body and make some suggestion to their posture. And they often say later, thank you for correcting my posture. And I say, usually I say, I wasn't correcting your posture. I was suggesting you try to sit another way. And the way I'm suggesting is not better than the way you're sitting. It's just a way I'd like you to try. And I think that the way I'm suggesting has certain virtues. But I'm not correcting your posture. Your posture is perfect. So I actually don't spend too much time trying to correct people's judgments.

[74:36]

I don't spend much time doing that. I try actually more I just, if somebody says, you know, something about me, I tell them how it is for me. But I don't try to correct their judgment. I try to just give them information about myself if I think it would be helpful. But sometimes their incorrect, what I might think is an incorrect judgment about me, like they might think I'm angry when I don't feel like I am, I sometimes don't necessarily try to correct that. But I might say, do you want to hear how it is for me? And if they say yes, I say, well, I don't feel angry. It's not like I'm right and they're wrong. It's just that that's my sense of it. And sometimes they do change their opinion once they hear that, but they may not. They may say, oh, you really were. I don't believe you. So I think that what I'm talking about this morning is that no matter what a person's judgment is or what your judgment is, there's a way to be with that. such that you're practicing together with all Buddhas.

[75:44]

When you're practicing together with all Buddhas, still some people might accurately, correctly not like you. They might judge you in such a way that they don't like what they see. Or they might judge you incorrectly and they like what they see. All these possibilities are always around you. Some people didn't like the Buddha who founded Buddhism. Some people didn't like that guy. Were they correct or incorrect? You can say what you want. You can say they were incorrect, you can say they misjudged, whatever. Some people are surrounded by people who everybody around them thinks they're great. or for a little while, everybody around them thinks they're great. This does happen sometimes to people. The greatest people have been disliked by some people. The question is, what's the practice when you're being liked and disliked, judged accurately and inaccurately according to your perception, or according to most people's perception?

[77:00]

What do you do with that situation? That's the situation. We are in a situation where people are judging us all the time. Nobody meets me and doesn't judge me. People don't just sit around and not judge people. You don't walk up to somebody and just let it go. You judge people all the time. By you, I don't mean even you. But your body and mind is constantly judging. Every person you meet, you judge. And you come up with pleasant, unpleasant, or I'm not sure. This is natural and basically unstoppable unless you do real damage to the person. People normally do this. And we look at one person for a few minutes. You judge them every minute. Judge, judge, judge. First I judge her and I say, oh, she's nice. But the next minute I say she's nice. I keep saying nice, [...] nice. Oh, not so nice. Not so nice. Enjoyable, enjoyable, enjoyable.

[78:02]

I'll stay here. Enjoyable, enjoyable. Oh, that's nice. Oh, not so enjoyable. I think I'll leave. This is going on all the time. If Buddha's there, Buddha doesn't say, get me out of here. Get me to some place where I'm enjoying this person, where I'm liking this person. No. The person who's there, feeling misjudged, feeling the pain of being misjudged, the person who's there, Buddha is there practicing with that person. That person is one of the people that Buddha practices together with. Buddha practiced together with that person, with you, when you were feeling the very deep pain of a close friend misjudging you. Buddha is there practicing together with you at that time. He's not waiting for your friend to change his opinion. He says, ìI'll wait till your friend changes his opinion, then I'll come.î Or, ìAfter your friend changes his opinion, I'm leaving.î No, Buddha is practicing with you all the time.

[79:07]

That's what Buddha is like. If it's not practicing together with all people all the time, that's not Buddha. That's not what we mean by Buddha in Zen. Buddha is always there with you. That's what Buddha is. Because there's no way for Buddha to split. Because Buddha is free from all discrimination. But it doesn't mean there's no discrimination or just nice discrimination. Whatever it is. However, for you to realize the wonderful thing that the Buddha is there with you, that the Buddha, meaning awakening, is with you, you have to also come forth and meet it You have to say, yeah, I'm practicing together with Buddha too. And the one who practices together with Buddha is Buddha too. And I'm not just practicing together with Buddha, I'm practicing together with all Buddhas, and I'm also practicing with my friend who's misjudging me. I'm practicing with him, and I'm practicing with all my friends who don't misjudge me.

[80:11]

I'm practicing with everybody. So then you're Buddha, and Buddha's practicing with you, and then Buddha and Buddha together. Now, that does turn out to set you free from all suffering, but you're not trying to, like, make things adjust people's judgment. Now, you may be trying to adjust their judgment, but that's not the practice. The practice is that no matter whether you're being judged or not, you almost always are anyway, but no matter what the judgment is, and no matter whether you're trying to manipulate it or not, that's not the practice. That's just human karma, which you're up to. But that's enough... You know, that's just around the central joy of practicing with all Buddhas and practicing with all beings and having whatever is happening be what you practice with. So the center is joy and surrounded by the entire world and you practice with the entire world by letting it be how it's being.

[81:12]

Okay? including that somebody's trying to fix up his relationship with his friend. That's okay. Let it happen. All right? And then, Rafael? In Dharma books? Dharma talks. Dharma talks, you hear the words? Things, beings, and sentient beings. Things, beings, and sentient beings, yes. Well, you know, in one sense you can say that there are living beings and then there are non-living beings. So in a sense you can say rocks, in a sense, are not living beings. You could say that. In other words, they don't suffer the way people do or the way dogs do. But from another point of view, you could say even rocks are living beings.

[82:14]

You could say that. But particularly, actually we do focus on beings that actually do, from our point of view, suffer. That's a living being. Living beings are beings who think that they're separate from other beings. who have consciousness and are suffering because of their understanding as a living being. Now, there also are beings who are, in a sense, not living beings, in the sense that they're not caught up in their individual existence. We can call them enlightened beings. So beings would include enlightened beings and beings who are still hung up in delusion. Beings would include both enlightened and unenlightened, liberated and suffering. And things, well, things are, again, kind of illusions of things.

[83:16]

You imagine something is cut off from its context and you emphasize its independence. That's a thing. And if you see other living beings as things, separate from their context, you probably feel that you're projecting your own sense of yourself in that way. So, I don't know, is that enough? Sentient is the same as living. Sentient is the same as living. Sentient means you can sense or feel. So, Karen, you're after this woman way over there. Do you still have a question? Okay. Yes? What is helpful for me sometimes when I get worried about my thoughts is that I see them as something cognitive of something physical that's happening, a fluidity that I, or a water quality, an alkaline quality that made me unable to instead be able to feel it more.

[84:22]

Karen? You're talking about realization of some things can set you free, not sure exactly, free, it reminded me though, I can realize that I caused my own suffering, and even while I'm doing it to myself, I can realize that I'm doing it to myself, and yet the emotions take over, and I can't turn it around at that moment, and I'm still sitting there suffering, even though I know I'm doing it to myself, and I want to do it to myself. What's Do I have a tip on how to get out of that particular pattern? Don't seek elsewhere. As soon as you don't seek elsewhere, you're out of it. The non-seeking elsewhere is immediate freedom.

[85:33]

even while this thing's going on, in the moment. It still goes on, maybe. And you're instantly freed by not seeking elsewhere. And Buddha, at that time, is not seeking elsewhere from that situation you're in. All the Buddhas are there practicing with you when you're in that situation. They're right there with you. And they're not making your situation go away. They're just holding your hand and kind of suggesting, Karen, don't seek elsewhere. Stay here with us. We're practicing here too. We're not trying to get away from this. How about you staying here with us? We got our problems too, but we're here with you. And we're not trying to get rid of... We're not spending our time getting rid of your... your problems. That's not our thing. We're spending our time being with you and practicing with you, and we're not seeking elsewhere. Why don't you stay with us and not seek elsewhere with us? But even if you don't hear them saying that to you, if you just simply don't seek elsewhere from this tight little space that you got yourself into and that you see yourself into, and seeing it, when you see what you're doing and you don't seek elsewhere,

[86:52]

it's all the better because you can actually see it and leave it alone. To be vague about it and leave it alone isn't as deep an understanding as to see very clearly how bad it is, how unproductive it is, and then say, this is what's happening. I'm working with this, not because this is good, not because this is bad, but just because this is what's going on. And I'm working with what's happening here. This is called just sitting. It's immediate liberation. You're welcome. And you didn't do anything. You didn't do anything. Just your Buddha nature. Yes. the idea of not having attachments you have trouble with it yeah i don't think i understand it specifically what does it mean to not have attachments and at the same time take care of somebody else well i'm not attached to you particularly but i can take care of you i could comb your hair for example right now you just messed it up and i and i could and if i was attached to you

[88:05]

then that might interfere with me helping Rafael, who doesn't need his hair combed. So attachment actually interferes with you taking care of people. One of the main interferences to taking care of people is attachment. A bigger interference to taking care of people is hatred. So if you can choose Hatred goes against taking care of people more than attachment to them goes against. Attachment is kind of good, in a way. That's what your sense is, you know. Doesn't attachment help you? So you can actually be attached to people and work to help them quite a bit. But the Buddha was, for example, Shakyamuni Buddha was... really put a lot of effort into taking care of his students, but he wasn't attached to any of them. Is hatred attachment? Well, no, I mean, no.

[89:07]

I mean, what we mean by hatred is you want to kill it or get rid of it. Attachment is you want to hold on to it. So you got your really nice students, you know, so you want to take care of your good students and take good care of them, right? And your bad students you want to get rid of. That's hatred. But the good students who you're attached to, that attachment actually will eventually interfere when they start to evolve. So now they're really nice students, but then they change and you say, wait a minute, don't change, don't be like that. Be like you used to be when you were a good student. So if you're trying to help beings and you let your affection get mixed in with the help, that affection can interfere with the compassion eventually when they start to evolve. So attachment interferes. with compassion. Attachment, not always, but sometimes, and eventually it will as the person evolves, if you get affection mixed in with caring for people. Hatred's worse, but attachment can interfere.

[90:08]

And you can do really good, you can really take care of people without being attached to them. Like, you know, people do that. I mean, people like take care of other people's children. they really don't have any attachment to. They just see, oh, there's somebody who needs help, they just help without any attachment. And some people just totally love their own kids, are completely attached to them, and smother them, you know, and hurt them terribly because they're so attached to them. And they won't let them move at all. And they try to move, they're really cruel to them. Like they love their children, and suddenly their children become something that they weren't attached to, and they just really... They harm the person that they most loved because of their attachment. If you get attached to clean fannies, it's hard to take care of dirty ones. Salvi?

[91:09]

I've been working with observing my rejection and grasping. Yes. And I noticed that... Observing, rejection, and grasping, and you noticed? That... When I'm doing that, I'm not really in the present. I'm really looking into the future, like I have a meeting with somebody and I'm sort of rejecting having the meeting with this person because this and that can turn out too. Uh-huh. So you're observing, you're grasping and rejecting and you're also observing that you're leaning into the future? Right. Or leaning into the past? That is correct. So I noticed that this grasping and rejection are more either related with the past, with feeling of the past, or something that is not really in the present. It's kind of early to say, but this is my observation within a week, that I'm not really in the present when I'm grasping or when I'm rejecting.

[92:22]

And I was just wondering, can really rejecting and grasping happen right now in the present? Can they happen right now in the present? Yes, they can. But as you say, they sometimes happen in the present with the imagination of the future or the past. So in the present, you can think of the future. Right now, you can think of the future and be present. But when you take thinking of the future, then you can get into rejection or grasping. Like if you think, in the future, I might lose this nice thing, then you might try to grasp it. Or if you think in the future this obnoxious thing might still be here, then you might start making some plans to get rid of it. And right now, you've got the negative thing right now. You don't have to get rid of it right now because you can't get rid of it right now. You've got pain right now. You can't get rid of it right now. But you think, I would like to get rid of it in the next moment.

[93:29]

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