Last night in the admonitions for Sashin, something like this was said, that Sashin is an opportunity to discover or to discover anew and clarify our ultimate concern and even realize it. My ultimate concern is not the ultimate itself. My ultimate concern is not really with the ultimate. And yet,

[01:02]

I am devoting lots of time and energy to understanding the ultimate. Because understanding the ultimate is the gate to liberation and the way to enter and move along the path to realizing Buddhahood. It's Buddhahood that's my ultimate concern, but we need to understand the ultimate if we want to realize the Buddha. Again, the gate to liberation is to realize that phenomena do not exist in accordance with false superimpositions that are the source of suffering.

[02:11]

In order to be free and live in freedom and peace with all beings, we must become free. We must give up believing that the way things appear is the way they really are. But they do appear to be the way they are not. what we say is our ancestor, Bodhidharma, did not and does not appear to be Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva.

[03:18]

He does not appear to be holy. He often looks like a man who needs a shave. We have a story that he met the emperor of China who was a great patron of the Buddhist monastic establishment and himself studied with many great teachers. And when he met Bodhidharma, he asked Bodhidharma, what is the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma said, last emptiness.

[04:23]

No holy. vast, all-pervasive absence of any superimposition on life. And although there is wholly Holy does not reach holy. The emperor then asked Bodhidharma, who is it that faces me now? Bodhidharma said, don't know.

[05:31]

It seems easy sometimes to say, don't know or I don't know, but to actually practice it, to actually meet things. Giving up the way you can know them, giving up the appearance by which you know them, Not agreeing with the way they appear as what they are, that way of practicing don't know is an immense challenge. Bodhidharma perhaps actually saw clearly the emptiness of all things. And perhaps he really, truly practiced don't know.

[06:42]

So he recommended to cease being involved with appearances Withdraw from involvement with your story of what's happening. Breathe through the way you grasp things in order to know them. then there will be no obstruction, no distortion, no choking of your life, and you enter the way of the Buddha.

[08:37]

Many meditation teachers have taught, have encouraged, the learning of a backward step. Step back from involvement with appearances. turn, step back from involvement with appearances in such a way that the light of your awareness turns and shines back from the appearances which are known. Reverse the light from the things you know and shine it in the other direction back to the source of mind which knows. This ability to know, this source of knowing, according to this sutra, is there.

[10:13]

It exists. We can pay attention to it, but it can't be known. As soon as it's known, it's thrown into a category and grasped as an appearance. How can we encourage our body and mind to give up involvement with what we can know and extend our involvement to our awareness which we cannot know in a graspable way. The source of knowing, of course, goes with us everywhere. Every experience where we know anything, the mind source which knows is there.

[11:18]

Can we learn to pay attention to it more and more? apparently, or anyway, there's stories which we can also let go of, that ancestors have been able to go with this reversal of attention. And this sets up the stopping of the process of agreeing to the appearance of the other dependent character in the guise, in the disguise of the imputational character.

[12:20]

The other dependent character appears to us in a knowable form, in a disguise, which we call the imputational character. Can you turn it down a little bit? That's a little bit better, is it? Some ancestors even say to destroy the process of agreement of approval of appearances as being the other dependent. You can tell stories about the other dependent. It's okay. Like, you can explain to children and yourself that the milk doesn't really come from the refrigerator, that it comes from

[13:29]

the grass and the earth and the water and the sun and the cows and the farmer and the trucks and the supermarket and so on. However, this is a story about the other dependent, too. Nice story. It's a way you can know the other dependent It's a way you confuse the other dependent with conventional designation. It's fine. It just requires letting it go. And when you let it go, you don't anymore know what the other dependent phenomena of milk is, even though you still have the milk. If we can learn this backward step, we will realize the dropping off of body and mind.

[14:45]

The body and mind is constantly dropping off, but we need to reverse the light in order to realize it. our original face will manifest and we will realize that it's Avalokiteshvara's face, even though it doesn't appear that way. I have some dis-ease around the words not knowing. In a way it sounds too easy or it sounds kind of unmindful. And that's part of the reason why we practice together so that if you happen to be practicing and trying to cultivate

[16:10]

bodhidharmas don't know, if you're considering giving your involvement with appearances a rest, and then you don't seem to be able to notice things like cups or shoes or doors or incense or kerosene or books or cushions, if you don't seem to be really mindful of them and attentive to them and remember them, then there's a chance for someone to point that out to you. Now the person who's pointing out to you might not really know whether it's that you're just not paying attention or that you're trying to learn the backward step and you've translated that into not paying attention.

[17:15]

In one case, the person is just being basically negligent, not paying attention to the dependent core rising of the moment. not paying attention to it or to the appearance of it. But the person might be actually diligently trying to learn how to turn the light around, but misunderstanding the instruction to think that would mean that they wouldn't know where the cup was or the incense is or where their feet are. So they can get some feedback that we need to continue to be fully mindful of phenomena as they appear while we stop being involved in the appearance. And that's, you see, not so easy.

[18:30]

We have some parents in the group. We used to have pins, bobby pins, not bobby pins, safety pins that we used to stick into the diapers to put on the babies. Now they're not so common anymore. Do you have those kind of pins? No. But you had to be careful with those pins so you didn't stick them into the baby or into yourself, but just into the cloth. So then you think, I have to be involved in the appearance, otherwise someone will get punctured. So we have stories like that, and I have to be involved in that story like that too, otherwise I won't be involved in the appearance of not sticking people. There is a story like that. There is an imputational character.

[19:39]

There is the imagination of things that don't exist. But we need to learn to turn the light around and not be involved with those stories. Eventually, finally, when sticking the pins into the cloth, It may be easier to start sitting in the Zen-do where if you experiment with turning the light around and giving up involvement with what's happening in the disguise of what you think is happening, if you experiment with giving that up, when you're sitting in meditation you probably won't stick anybody because you have no pins in your hand. And you can learn that you can sit through a period of meditation, breathe through a period of meditation, and you survive very nicely even though during that whole time you took a break from believing that what you thought was happening was what was happening.

[20:56]

You can take a break and it doesn't hurt anybody. As a matter of fact, it starts to open up the process of seeing the ultimate So in the inter-sanctum of Zen practice, when teacher and disciple are together and they don't have any sharp objects in their hand, when the student is sitting bare-handed, empty-handed, teacher dares to ask, what are you doing? And the dear disciple says, I'm not doing anything at all. And the teacher says, you say, or the teacher says, well then are you idly sitting there?

[21:58]

And the student says, if I were idly sitting here, I would be doing something. And the teacher says, you say you're not doing anything at all. What is it? What is this? not doing anything at all. And the student says, even the 10,000 sages do not know what this is. The student, after studying many years with her teacher, says, I've come to say goodbye. The teacher says, where are you going? The student says, I'm going on a pilgrimage.

[23:03]

The teacher says, what's the purpose of this trip? The student says, I don't know. The teacher says, not knowing is most intimate. Going on a pilgrimage? Going to sit a period of meditation? What's the purpose of it? Don't know. that those words could be specifying. And in this case, the teacher could see that in this case, with this monk, that don't know was not just saying don't know, it was being intimate with the other dependent phenomena of planning a trip.

[24:06]

When you're sitting, if you find a don't know, in your heart, in your body and mind, is that don't know the same as Bodhidharma's don't know. There's a don't know that's most intimate with your body and mind. Every moment there's that way, that intimate way of being with what you are is called by many teachers, don't know. No one can measure it. No one can get a hold of it. No one inside it or outside it. It's actually your true intimacy with your body and mind right now, and we call it don't know. When you're that way with your experience, the door to emptiness is open. I have written down approximately 11,000 Zen stories about this topic, about this instruction.

[25:41]

But I don't think I'm going to tell them all this morning. But they're written down right here. If you need any more proof that this Zen tradition coming to us from ten directions and three times is teaching this... I'll tell some more stories. there's a sutra which we can call the scripture which is untying, unraveling the deep meaning and the deep intention of the Buddha's teaching.

[26:57]

And in that sutra, Buddha was asked, when you taught that all dharmas, all phenomena are empty of own being, unproduced, unceasing,

[28:27]

quiescent from the start, and naturally in a state beyond all sorrow, naturally in a state of liberation. What were you thinking of? What was in your mind at that time? And then the Buddha said, I was thinking of three types of emptiness of own being, three types of lack of own being. And the three types are a lack of own being in terms of character, a lack of own being in terms of self-production, and an ultimate lack of own being. which is the lack of own being in terms of self. That's what I was thinking of when I taught all things lack of own being.

[29:39]

And then he Then he asks, well, what are these three types of lack of own being? And he uses the three characteristics of all phenomena to explain what these three characters, three lacks of own being, three types of lack of own being are. So you all have some exposure to that, right? This is somewhat familiar to you now, this part of the sutra. If you keep reading Chapter 7 and reciting Chapter 7 over and over, it might happen that you'll become even more familiar with it.

[30:54]

I've been reading it and writing it and remembering it and listening to it for a while and I'm getting more familiar with it. Fortunately or unfortunately I did not get exposed to this when I was seven years old. I just ran into the sutra only ten years ago So I've only had ten years to study it. I hope to live a few more years so I can study it some more. I want to live longer to study this sutra and others. Maybe so.

[31:58]

Hallelujah. Then the Buddha says a little bit, after what I just mentioned, the Buddha says, paramartha-samutgata. I do not designate. The Buddha makes conventional designations. Just like us. for us. I do not designate the three types of lack of own being because sentient beings in the realms of sentient beings view the own being of the imputational as distinct from the other dependent character and the thoroughly established character in terms of own being. He doesn't designate these three types of lack of own being are even one type of lack of own being because beings do view the own being of the imputational as distinct from the own being of the other dependent and the thoroughly established.

[33:23]

That's not why he designates these things. He designates them because sentient beings in the realm of sentient beings do not view the imputational as distinct from the other dependent. They do not view the imputational as distinct from the other dependent. They view the imputational as being the other dependent. So he doesn't give this teaching because we already understand, in other words. He gives it because we do not. Because we're confused, he gives this teaching so that we can become unconfused, so that our confusion can be aerated. He also doesn't teach this. Oh, by the way, he says also, sentient beings in the realm of sentient beings, or as the other translation says, I am not propounding these three kinds of no essence because among the variety of sentient beings in the world, some

[34:44]

regard the pattern of the imaginative clinging as a distinct essence. So it sounds like sentient beings can be sentient beings in the realm of sentient beings, or sentient beings can be sentient beings in the world. It's almost like sentient beings maybe can take a break. That you could be a sentient being not in the realm of sentient beings. The realm of sentient beings is to confuse the amputation with the other dependent. That's the realm of sentient beings. And if you're an unenlightened being in that way, well, then the Buddha will teach you this. But it sounds like you could be a sentient being but not be in the realm of sentient beings. And you'd have a different practice then. Still not a Buddha. but no longer in the realm of confusion.

[35:47]

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