I told you before that I thought that before studying this kind of material it'd be good if we were all fairly settled into our own experience day to day here in this monastery and I don't know. It's hard for me to assess exactly how settled everybody is. But that's one of the things that seems necessary before you study this kind of teaching, this kind of teaching about the middle way.

[01:02]

It's very difficult to understand on many levels the teaching of the middle way. But it's not really possible to understand it if you're not grounded in your own experience. There's some teachings of Buddhism I think you can understand and be just a little bit grounded in your experience, but this teaching, in some sense, requires more settledness than some others. This teaching of Nagarjuna is to turn around and look at

[02:11]

the way reality is built. And a lot of people can hear something about the Buddha's teaching that appeals to them, that's encouraging or inspiring, or they can see the examples of some practitioners that's encouraging or inspiring and decide to devote their attention and energy to the practice which is put forth by the tradition and by the people who are living representatives of the tradition. I mean, simply put, if we take good care of this valley and people come down here in the summer or during interim, if we take care of the Green Gulch Valley, people come there throughout the year and if we take care of each other and we're kind to each other and care about the world lovingly.

[03:13]

It encourages people. And then we can give them some instructions about how they can also live that way. And this is a great benefit and lots of fun. But it doesn't necessarily uproot graciously or any other way these these constructions we make out of what's going on in this valley or any valley. And since people are so prone to convert what's happening into some constructed thing, since people are so prone to reify what's happening, they suffer. And in that suffering, again, they may find something appealing about some of the practices of Buddhism or Christianity or whatever, but still the basic tendency can be left intact.

[04:26]

And... And there's still... As long as that's going on, as long as we're making the world into something solid and frozen, there's going to be problems. Stuart mentioned to me that he had a philosophy teacher one time who, before teaching some philosophy, tried to help the students get a sense of what the problem the philosopher had or saw that motivated her to create her philosophy, what she was trying to deal with, what the problem was. I guess there may be some philosophers who just make up philosophies with no problem, they just do it for the fun of arguing and thinking.

[05:31]

There probably are some like that. But Nagarjuna, of course, and Buddha are not that kind of people. Buddha was primarily shocked by the suffering of the world, achieved liberation, and then when people asked him to teach, he suddenly turned into a philosopher. He had to teach the philosophy of his liberation. So I feel that it's good to, if we can, get a sense of what Nagarjuna's problem is, or was, and how does it apply to today? Is there some idiomatic version of that in each of us? Can you make, not exactly make Nagarjuna's problem your own, but something like that? Which is to say, make Buddha's problem your own.

[06:36]

So I think some of you kind of have already, to some extent, made Buddha's problem your own. I've seen the suffering of the world and seen that there may be some way that would alleviate or liberate, that would alleviate the suffering or liberate things from the suffering. either yourself or seeing how it would be good if other people, I think, to some extent, that problem has been made your own. But once you see the cause of the problems, some of the problems, then those problems, then those causes also can become your problem. the story of Nagarjuna's name was, his Buddhist name, his monk's name was, well, let me just say he was born into a regular family, and his parents were happy to have a son, and I guess, which often happens, they bring in a...

[08:14]

a soothsayer or whatever to make some prediction about the child. And the person predicted that the child would die at seven. So when he was seven years old, the family turned him over to the Buddhist monastery or the Buddhist monastics. And he went and then he just went around visiting various teachers for a while and finally became ordained as a monk. His name was Sriman. And he was a good student of the Buddhist practice at that time. This is like the second century AD. And he became actually quite well known as a practitioner and teacher. And he attracted the attention of what are called Nagas.

[09:18]

This story is, in a sense, I guess the story is a legend. I don't know the definition of legend exactly, but I think it has something to do with the fact that, I mean, people say it, but there is no, maybe no historical data that you can, like, show with a piece of paper, like, you know, on this rock here we found, it said Nagarjuna was born at such and such a time, his parents were such and such, and some Nagas came to see him, and here's what Nagas are, and so we can figure these things out, it's not exactly that kind of a thing. But apparently he was an actual person, and, no, not apparent, we're saying that he, we're suggesting he might have been an actual person, and that some Nagas came to visit him. Nagas are spiritual beings, they're not regular, you know, they're not human Nagas. They're spiritual beings.

[10:25]

However, they can manifest as humans. However, when they're not manifesting as humans, of course, they don't look like humans. Matter of fact, you might not be able to see them at all. If you were near a naga, you might not be able to see it. But if they manifest as humans and walk up and stand in front of you, you can see them. And Narajuna could see them. And I could talk to you a little bit about my understanding of Nagas and various other spiritual entities, but maybe that could be later. For now, I would just say that what we're talking about is something that you can't see,

[11:26]

under some circumstances, you can see under other circumstances, okay? And then you can't see it anymore, because it's not taking some form that you can see with whatever equipment you've got to see things. But I think you all know that there's things going on that you can't see, right? Like gamma rays you can't see, and x-rays you can't see, and these kind of things. And yet, Somehow people think that there's something, too, talking about them. But there's some things which don't even show up on gamma ray detectors and things like that, that some people have some experience of. These are called spiritual things. They're not material. Gamma rays, X-rays, light waves are all material phenomena, which take up the space in the world and so on, okay? Spiritual things are non-material, but they can... they can animate material situations, and then you can sometimes see their effect.

[12:31]

So the naga is that kind of thing. So a naga appears to, a bunch of nagas actually, appear to Naga Arjuna, and he recognizes them as nagas. He says, oh hi, you're nagas, right? I'm going to start looking around here, but as far as I know, none of you people are nagas. But I didn't look more carefully like that, just being too near unminded. Anyway, they came to see him because they were happy to hear about what he was doing in the world. He spotted him as a Naga, and then they said, yeah, that's right, we are. And not only that, but we, and the Nagas, by the way, come from the deep ocean. They live down deep. There's spirits on the planet who live down deep in the ocean. There's also spirits on the planet who live in the desert, up in the mountaintops, in the sewers and so on. There are spirits in various locations and various patterns. The Nagas happen to live in the deep ocean.

[13:32]

Apparently they don't live on the beach or however they can manifest on the beach. Their palaces are in the deep ocean. But they came all the way up to see Nagarjuna and when he recognized him they said, I guess we should tell him that we have kept some of the Buddhist teachings in good condition for the right time. And the teachings that they kept were the Mahayana teachings, the teachings of universal love. That's the ones they were keeping. universal love and compassion, universal brotherhood and sisterhood, you know, that kind of thing. Those teachings which the Buddha gave, the Nagas were there at the time of the Buddha too.

[14:39]

If you read the Buddhist scriptures, open them up, Theravada scriptures, there were Nagas in the assembly. There were Yakshas, Gandharvas, Mohoragas, Yaksha, I mean, Nagas, Titans, Ashuras. There was a bunch of stuff besides people and Bodhisattvas. It was a jam-packed situation, a lot of variety, and they all really dug what Buddha was saying. And Buddha loved them all. Every one of them. Multicultural. Somebody gave me a painting, which I hope to bring down to Tassajara. It's a painting. It's a painting of one of Buddha's... you know, discourses, but it's not, doesn't have Buddha in it, it's sort of like over on the sidelines picture. You know, it's back in the kind of like bleachers kind of section, you know, not the reserved seats, the box seats, where the bodhisattvas and the arhats and the donors are, but, you know, where these kind of like marginal beings are, and it's quite a group.

[15:45]

And some of them, you know, if they kind of like made us, if they scowled at you, given the other... attributes that they've got, you might be a little nervous because they've got horns coming out and scales and, you know, there were some Nagas in the group. Some of them, you know, have the capacity to eat human flesh without cooking it easily and so on. They can live in trees. They can live, you know, on glaciers. Anyway, these kind of people were in the picture and they're all looking kind of like in the same direction, toward the central, you know. They're looking at the Buddha, right? And they look so sweet. Kind of like... All of them look really sweet, but, you know, you can imagine if they didn't look sweet, you'd be scared if you thought about the future. Fortunately, it's just a painting, you know, it's not going to jump out at you. You think, or you can stay in the present with it, and it's just kind of like... Interesting that these people were at the Buddha's lectures.

[16:49]

And you know, they may even be at our lectures. We don't know for sure. Look around. They might be here. Yeah. So, the Buddha taught, you know, a lot of stuff. And one of the things he taught was, you know, how to liberate yourself. He taught people how to do that. He taught people how to liberate others. He taught universal love. He taught wisdom. He taught a lot of stuff because he just sort of gave people whatever they needed for his whole teaching career. However, some people might say that the teaching of the Mahayana, of universal love, sort of, well, in fact, looks like historically it was not the right time for it at Buddha's lifetime. It didn't sort of kick in and take off in the 5th century BC. But he was teaching it. And you can see it in his teaching.

[17:55]

You can see it in the teaching. He taught low. But he also set up this institution called, you know, the monastic institution. He taught these guys how to be monks and how to keep together as a group and keep their discipline up and, you know, keep on their own case and support others and all that. So the Mahayana teaching of, you know, kind of like let it all hang out and embrace everybody, didn't adapt so well to that situation. So it kind of like waned and kind of people forgot about it. The Prajnaparamita scriptures kind of were forgotten about. The Nagas who were there at the Buddha's talks didn't forget about them. They just said, well, if these guys aren't interested, let's just go back to the ocean and bring this stuff with us. And I don't know exactly how they translated it into the water, but this is possible.

[18:57]

So they did. And there's an Indian version of this, but I don't know the Indian name, but in Tibetan they call it Torma. Torma and what's the thing that goes with the Torma? I think it's Torma and Torton. The Torma is the thing. that's sort of like transmitted into another realm temporarily when it's not appropriate for the time. And I think the torton or turton or whatever. Torton and turma? You said turma? Would you say turma? Turma and turma. Anyway, I forgot. Anyway, there's two different terms. One means The teaching which is transmuted into some storage form until it's appropriate, like into water, can be transmitted into water, into leaves, into rocks, into mud, into flowers.

[20:06]

It goes into these other forms and the spirits in those realms take care of it. If the humans aren't interested in the teaching, these beings are. They take it into their realms. They take it into the trees. in the mountains, stuff like that. Following this? Simple. But hard to see. Anyway, then certain beings, human beings, manifest in history and they bring them back out. So the Buddha had this whole, you know, this whole basic... He didn't teach everything, but he showed how, you know, to respond to every situation. So what he showed brought up all the teachings and all the people there took all the teachings they did and took it away. And if the humans didn't want to take care of it at that time, which they didn't want to take care of some of his teachings, they just went into those forms. And then later, like Nagarjuna's time, he just happens to exist around the time of, you know, certain other people like Jesus, right? And the Roman Empire and blah, blah, blah.

[21:08]

A time in civilization where people were ready for kind of like mass, mass movements. And so around the... Just before the beginning of the common era, the Prajnapamita scriptures started to resurface. And then a little while later, Naga Arjuna got this special transmission from the Nagas. And his name changed from Sriman to Naga Arjuna. Arjuna means, you know, somebody who accomplishes or is successful with the aid of the Nagas. helped him be successful. So his name is one who accomplished what he needed to accomplish with the aid of these spirits who transmitted this teaching of the Mahayana, universal love. So what happened here is this guy who was a Buddhist monk and whatever his motivations were, we don't know exactly, but for some reason or another this teaching comes up out of the ocean, this teaching of

[22:16]

of love and compassion comes up out of the ocean and dumps into him. We sometimes see pictures of him. I'm looking for the picture. I have one myself and I'll bring it back when I come back from the city. Picture of Nagarjuna sitting there and this rainbow coming up out of the ocean bringing all this compassion to him through the teachings of Prajnaparamita. A teaching which doesn't look that compassionate maybe but it is compassionate in the sense that it's trying to liberate people in the deepest possible way try to uproot this deep tendency to reify what's happening. So then he gets his teaching and then he teaches. And now when he teaches, not everybody was ready for this, of course. It wasn't like the whole Indian subcontinent said, thank you for this teaching. Matter of fact, a lot of people had trouble with him when he was alive. And then over the centuries, people had problems with him because He basically takes everything away, you know, in a sense.

[23:18]

Takes away all your attachments and he just removes every possible way to get stuck in any dogmatism. And people don't like that necessarily. Even though it's exactly what everybody needs. But enough people did so that the teaching didn't have to go back in the ocean again and have been out on the surface of the planet ever since. And people have... have been trying to refute it ever since, and there's been no coherent, you know, reputation of what he's saying over almost 2,000 years. And the more people can't refute him, the more influential he's become, so that now he's very influential in the world, even beyond Buddhism, just like Dogen Zenji is similar. And he kind of went underground for about 700 years, and now he's surfacing again. And this society is bringing up out of the moldy pits of Soto Zen temples in Japan.

[24:27]

So here we have Nagarjuna. So what's his problem? Okay, what's his problem? Well, his problem is that Buddhism had become dogmatic. That's basically his problem. And to some extent, that's basically the problem here at Tassahara, is that Buddhism had become dogmatic. It's not dogmatic the way it was then exactly. We don't like to have a central headquarters of what the dogmatism is supposed to be. but almost everybody that tells the horror has their own dogmatism about what it is. It's just we don't have a coordinated dogmatism. And some of you are so new, you're not dogmatic yet. Well, congratulations. And then you don't need Nagarjuna, maybe.

[25:29]

But most of us who've been practicing for a little while are dogmatic about what practice is. And I really appreciate that some of you although you came here with dogmatism, and you heard me talk, and it kind of shocked you that you kind of said, well, I'll consider that. Like this thing about, you know, Zazen is not learning meditation. All the people who came here thinking that Buddhism was learning meditation. Well, no, that's interesting. So in particular, what had happened... in Nagarjuna's time is that the Buddhist teaching had been under the protection, what do you call it, the literary executors of Buddhism were the monastic institutions and the scholars who had this wonderful system where you could

[26:40]

you could preserve the Buddha's teachings in a coherent mass so that it didn't get the stuff that they wanted to keep anyway. It didn't get dispersed and wasn't confused and you could go and use it. It was really nice. And they had this... The Abhidharma has this system... Well, the Abhidharma is basically... It says in the beginning of the Abhidharma Kosha... That what the Abhya Dharma is, is that it is immaculate prajna, immaculate wisdom, and its entourage. That's what Abhya Dharma is. It's pure wisdom and the stuff that comes with it. That's what the Abhya Dharma is. And that system, the Abhya Dharma system, the books and stuff, is basically to take care of that wisdom. And that wisdom was to discern the dharmas.

[27:51]

That's what it was. To see and discern correctly, to accurately discern the dharmas. In other words, to accurately discern your experience into these dharmas. Yes? Not necessarily irreducible. They got into that, but at first it could be just like that you would see your experience as five skandhas. Instead of seeing your experience as you or not you, instead of apprehending your experience as yourself and others, you'd see your experience as forms, feelings, various conceptions or perceptions, all kinds of impulses or mental formations like anger and laziness and faith and attachment and confusion and stuff like that.

[29:00]

You'd see that. And then consciousness. That's how you, in the flow of events that you're experiencing, you actually be, it's actually like, you'd be in a flow of events. Like all of us are in this flow of events and most of us see it as, you know, in these ways of self and other. Me and them, me and my friends and them and stuff like that. And that way of seeing it is called birth and death, cyclic birth and death. It's a misapprehension of the flow of events. It makes it hard to see. that things are changing because you think it's the same self and the same other and stuff like that. It makes things get real, well, it makes them get reified and you get dogmatic about it all. You don't just, like, construe what's going on in self and other as a kind of temporary hypothesis and then sort of reconsider the whole thing the next moment.

[30:01]

No. You get rigid about it and then it gets very established and so that's the problem. And Buddha articulated that. He said, well, there's suffering, and there's a cause of suffering, and the cause of suffering is clinging and craving. And there's an end to suffering, and the end to suffering is this path. But the craving, the definition of suffering is what is called... Upadana panchaskandam dukkham. Dukkha, or the problem in the world, is that we upadana, we grasp or we cling to the five aggregates of existence. We take the various elements that are constantly changing and we make them into, we grab them into like a unit.

[31:03]

And that can be self or other. And that's the basic definition of suffering. And it's because we yearn for objects, we thirst to get something, but we have a hard time resisting doing that. So we do yearn to make the world into something graspable and usable. And because of that yearning or thirst, we grasp, and then we're on the birth and death cycle. To be able to tolerate what's happening over what you can use, to be able to tolerate what's happening and to forego making what's happening into something usable, requires for most people either a nervous breakdown or

[32:39]

valuing what's happening over what you can use. And there's some different reasons why you might value what's happening over what you can use and manipulate. One of them might be that you actually have had a little taste of it and find it to be very relaxing. Like somebody told me recently that recently something happened to her and she was going to faint. And she really wanted to faint. Things were such that she kind of like wanted to go down. Even though down was not such a nice place in certain ways. It wasn't like down into a soft feather bed of honey. It actually was kind of like a dirty kitchen floor. But she wanted to go, given her state of stimulation, she wanted to go down.

[33:44]

Everybody was holding her up. She wanted to go down into the whatever it was. She didn't know exactly. Anyways, being down in that soup is actually, what do you call, biological bliss. And everything's glowing. It's actually what we want. But you can't necessarily speak English there or Spanish. You can't necessarily hold your vowels. Maybe you will, maybe you won't. I don't know. There's no guarantees. Things are not in that situation. I mean, they're not into that kind of like categories. Everything's flowing. Anyway, that's what's happening, right? But you can't use it. You can't use this... kind of situation. Because you can't get a hold of it, it can't get a hold of you. It's just, it's not you in it. It just, what can I say? It's inconceivable.

[34:45]

Life. Life inconceivable. So if you had a taste of that, you might say, that is, that's where I want to live. Or another possibility is you might have heard that not, that trying to turn this into something usable is really going to cause you and a lot of other people that you love a lot of problems. So you better start valuing that over what you can manipulate. Or a combination of both. It's wonderful when you get there, plus you stop being a trouble to society and yourself. So with those two motivations, you might start valuing even though you don't know what it is yet, you might start saying, I value what's happening even though I can barely face it. Or you don't even know what direction to look or whether I should even look in a direction. I do value that over what I can use, even though I have the strong habit of trying to convert what's happening into something I can grasp. And as soon as you do that, self's born. And then you grasp that and blah blah.

[35:51]

That's the basic situation. The Abhidharma says, if you can like start... seeing, I'll start bringing these elements into view. You can bring the elements into view. Why do you bring the elements into view? Well, mindfulness of body. Brings it into view. And when you first bring mindfulness of body into view, you bring into view... What do you bring into view? You bring into view the body you can use. That's your habit. If you just keep bringing the body you can use into view, and you keep listening to the teaching that tells you to bring that body into view, you start to realize that body is not actually just the body you can use. It's actually, this body you can use is actually some kind of like imposition on top of the body you actually have. The body you actually have is that which can be hit by something. It's not something that has arms and legs and eyes and teeth

[36:56]

That's a total construction. And you can say, oh, no, it's not because I've got other people to agree with me. That's called social construction. We have a socially constructed body. And we have a socially constructed version of what flies' bodies are like, too, but they don't agree. And they have a construction of what our bodies look like, and we don't agree. Anyway, this is just a construction. But what's not so much a construction is that there is a physical structure thing here. And it's something that can be touched or hit. It gets hit. And when it gets hit, it responds. And there's five ways it gets hit. It gets hit by pactal stimulation. It gets hit by electromagnetic radiation of a certain range. It gets hit by mechanical radiation. It gets hit by chemicals. And it gets hit by gases. That's the body. The body is those five modalities of being touched. physically.

[37:58]

That's what the body is. You start to realize that instead of saying this usual version of the body. And also you start to notice, you start to bring into view how you feel. And you start to bring in what kind of conceptions you've got. Then you've got to bring in sort of what kind of what is the consciousness? Calm, upset, confused, angry, blah, blah, blah. You bring all that stuff in. There's not a self yet here. And then consciousness of the whole thing. No self yet. And then if a self does arise, here it comes, there's a self again. Oh, I haven't seen you for a few minutes or weeks or seconds. Which one of the skandhas is that? Because you keep bringing what's happening into new skandhas. And you start to see these elements rather than these compositions, rather than these compositions, which are socially constructed, are not in babies, you know, little tiny babies, and then we'll watch it evolve as you grow up, and it grows up.

[39:01]

It's different in different societies, but there are some commonalities because we live on the same planet and so on and so forth. But it's actually, everybody comes down to these basic things. All cultures come down to these basic elements. And so the Abhidharma taught this kind of discernment of dharmas, these kind of discernment of elements... in the flow of existence. And if you could see that way, you would cut through the ordinary world and be liberated from it. And the Buddha taught that part of what he taught. So that the world you live in is like, you know, it's this little construction you make around yourself, the self you know, other and so on. When you start analyzing this, this shell just drops out and you fly out.

[40:05]

And, you know, that's called the cessation of suffering. What's the Buddha taught? He taught other stuff too. But anyway, that was what particularly adapted itself well to the monastic system. So the monastics, with their leaders, the scholars, and the generals and kings that liked the scholars and other monks. They set up this system to protect this wonderful teaching and they started to make it into something real rather than just a way to see things in a different way to set yourself free. And the system got frozen and rigid It turned into an edifice, a school, a very powerful school, the dominant element in Buddhism. And Nagarjuna learned about that stuff, and he saw the problems that were occurring, and he decided to, for whoever would listen, point out these rigidities and these holdings to set the...

[41:24]

the liberative process moving again. Part of what happened in this process, now Buddhism, the nice thing about Buddhism, you listen to Buddhist teaching, he wasn't like putting down life at all. He was not doing that kind of thing. He put down the way of seeing life in such a way that it caused you misery. He showed how when you look at your five skandhas in a certain way, They become sources of misery. If you look at them another way, they become sources of bliss. He taught that. But he didn't say that skandhas are bad things or the world that delivers itself to you in this way is bad. Matter of fact, he loved the world. That's why he was teaching all day long. He taught all these different kinds of beings. You know, with... We have no record of any exceptions to the beings he taught.

[42:29]

He did get a little brusque with a few people, but basically he was teaching all the time. Because he loved it, he loved the people. That was the thing. So, just let me say a little bit more about Nagarjuna. So he wanted to, like... loosen the whole thing up again and get it flowing, particularly get the love flowing back into the situation. And to use these teachings in an appropriate way, but the first thing he had to do, basically, was level the whole situation. And he did pretty well, although not all those people read it. It did react. He was part of... He didn't start the Mahayana all by himself, but he was like, he's the leading articulator of the philosophy of universal love. That's him.

[43:35]

The philosophy of universal love is not you should love people. It's not what it's about. It's about you should understand the pinnacle arising, and then nobody has to tell you to love people. or tell you to love anything. As a matter of fact, there aren't any people anymore, or anything to love. It's everything's you. So, you know, we have no rest to tell you to love yourself. You do. Wendy? Well, thinking about another family talking as well, and I read somewhere that somebody kind of thought of Buddha as being one of the following people. you know, the world, but something like that. And I thought about that in terms of why the Bodhisattva decides not to be enlightened and effective faith, all being, because the loneliness of, you know, sort of, knock on anyone else, seeing the world that way, so that you don't have anyone to talk to or relate to, but you're still alive, you know, in a certain way.

[44:44]

And so, That would be why what? And the idea of a monastic institution being a place where people are brought to the maturity where they can actually learn how to feed themselves. It's a sort of situation where very funny, where I'm active, there's not that possibility, but that isn't the end. But even in monastic institutions, this reifying ability or naive realism, which we all have the ability to enact, crops up there too.

[45:51]

And then the monastery can turn into the monastics and the non-monastics, and the point of the whole thing is lost. But, yeah, I think in one sense, if you look at Buddha as alone, I would say that Buddha alone, one way to talk about Buddha is that when Buddha was alone, Buddha wasn't Buddha. Buddha was someone who had this tremendous insight. which liberated him and which he really was enjoying tremendously for quite a while. At least forty-nine days he just sat there and enjoyed his liberation. And now he didn't enjoy it but he reviewed it and went over it back and forth and all around. He just had the greatest time with his liberation. But he wasn't yet Buddha, really. He wasn't Buddha until somebody came. Prior to that, he was lonely. However, he was in a state of bliss to such an extent that he hardly even noticed his loneliness. And in that sense, you could almost say he was what you call Prajika Buddha.

[46:56]

But this Prajika Buddha had the ability to teach. His enlightenment was so great, he had the ability to teach other beings. And then he became a regular, what do you call, Samyak Sam Buddha. So Buddha was an Arhat. In other words, he was someone who liberated himself, but he was also... Because he was a bodhisattva before he was an arhat, he also became what's called a Samyaksam Buddha, a completely enlightened Buddha, over and above being an arhat, because he could teach all beings. So at that point, he wasn't lonely anymore. Yeah, I'm right now stuck on your real video. Monastery, it's a masculine tradition. Reo? Would you say that? Reo? Reify. Reify. Reify. It means to make substantial.

[47:59]

Okay. And everything you said tonight, isn't that reify Buddha? If I think that what I just said was what Buddha's talk, then I would be reifying, I don't know, something, I guess. I'd be reifying my own thoughts. I can't reify what Buddha taught. I can't reify you. I can't reify Nagas. I can't reify anything. I can only reify my thoughts about things. And I can do that just by saying that my thoughts are substantial realities. That's how I reify them. But the things I'm thinking about, whatever they are, they don't get reified by what I said unless the person himself says, hey, he looks happy over there reifying everything, I think I'll do it too. Of course, I can say to people, please reify what I said, and some people just out of the kindness of their hearts will join the program. But they don't have to. They can say, well, you know, I appreciate what you're asking, but I think it actually wouldn't be a good idea, so I'll just sit over here with, you know, not really knowing what it is you said and let it all flow around and stuff in my ongoing interpretive, you know, slush here of what you're saying.

[49:11]

Okay. Well, but you might be able to substantiate that it's all hearsay. That sounds like that's what you're doing. Yeah, that's what re-application is, is to sort of say, well, what I think of Buddha is hearsay, and that you actually think that's what it is rather than something else. Pardon? Don't think of it at all? If you do that, then you're reifying it by not thinking of it at all, probably. What do you do? Well, you want to make a guess? Faith? No. No, no, wrong word. I'm sorry. If you're into reification, if you are, like I am and like some other people I know are, if you're into it, what would be a good thing to, what would be a good response?

[50:15]

No, he knew. The thing to do, if you could possibly do it, if you knew that you were reifying things, the thing to do would be to admit that you're reifying them. Confess it. And then to confess it, face what you just confessed. Face what you're doing. face that you're making things into substantial realities. Then watch how that works. Watch how you convert a perfectly reasonable life into something that you can manipulate. Watch how that works. Notice what happens. You tell me. I can tell you, but you tell me. I can tell you, but you tell me. You check it out. You see what you do to the world. Poor little world. Defenseless, you know, can't do a thing. Can't do a thing. Just sitting there and you just sort of reify it, and it cannot stop you.

[51:19]

You know? Trees are sitting up there, you know, being whatever they are. Who knows? Mountains are being what they are. People are being what they are. And you reify them, and they can't stop you. They can't, like, be a certain way. Okay, well, I'm going to blow up ten times normal size. You know? Okay, I see that. Boom! Reified. That didn't work. Okay, I'll shrink to, you know, my new size. Reified. I'll turn into a frog. Reified. You can't stop yourself and the world can't stop you. Therefore, if that's what you're up to, then the first thing to do is be upright. What does that mean? What does being upright mean? One of the meanings of being upright. Reified completely. Right. Right. And how do you reify completely? How would you go about that? Be yourself. Be yourself. In other words, be honest. Be honest.

[52:22]

Be honest. Be honest about what you're up to. Are you one of these people, one of these beings, one of these sentient beings, these living beings, are you one of them? Do you have the tendency that you've heard the other ones have of reifying everything left and right all day long so that you can manipulate, so you can portion pole, so that you can own and divorce, so that you can feel positive and negative about it. Actually, you don't have to reapply to feel positive and negative, fortunately. If you stop doing it, you just won't know what you're feeling positive and negative about necessarily, but the feelings will still come and go. But anyway, we don't like that. So we make it into everything that we can get our little nipsies on. If that's what you're doing, then be honest about it, admit it, and if you admit it, then you can watch how you do it, and if you watch how you do it, you can see the dependent core rising and so on. You can see the elements will start appearing to you, and you can see they're in a relationship, and you become free.

[53:25]

But what happened in the Abhidharma was, they started analyzing these things, but then they made, because it was part of a system, they wanted to hold the whole thing together, that sense of holding it together, like Buddhism... You know, hold Buddhism together, hold Buddhist teaching together rather than hold the whole universe together. Hold it together and don't let it get confused and don't let it get so that nobody can find out where the scriptures are and what the teachings are. Get this thing under control. What is it? It's this. Are you sure it's not that? No, it's this. And that way, if anybody asks you, where's Buddhism? Well, you can say, it's this, this, and this, and here's a chapter, blah, blah, blah, and you can just lay it out there and no confusion or very little. And everybody loves it and gives you donations and you can... talk anybody down left and right, it's really great. And you can use Buddhism. You can take this transcendent, total freakout of liberation and package it and sell it. And teach it in these nice little forms and have arguments about it and defeat everybody and blah, blah, blah.

[54:32]

So that's what they did. In other words, they kind of almost killed this wonderful, wonderful spiritual revolution. Not completely, but they came close because if they'd done it completely, there wouldn't even have been Nagarjuna left. But he would join the system and the human heart was not crushed. The Nagas came and gave him a little help and he and some other people revitalized the whole system. It was a planetary thing, you know. It wasn't just Nagarjuna. It was a planetary thing. The world was ready to bring life back into various religious systems. So it happened in Judaism, too. This big crack appeared in the Jewish establishment. And stuff started flowing all over the place. And people got big spiritual juice. And Nagarjuna, he was one of the people who gave this big juice to the system.

[55:35]

So basically, you may not have the problem with Abhidharma that he had. That's because Abhidharma is not that popular these days. But you do, and your friends do have something like this, namely some dogmatism about spirituality. You may be able to identify with it. You can identify with it. You might be able to... Although you may not want to dismantle the system that he dismantled, you can maybe see how... see the spirit of dismantling and deliberating operating in this thing, in this place. Even though the system is not so oppressive in Buddhism anymore, he shows the prototypic method of unlocking a stuck religious system, a religious system that there's some life there which made it all happen and now it's been coded over with all this stuff. How do you unpack it? How do you break it open and get it flowing again? Do you have that problem with your practice in any way?

[56:40]

And if you do, then Nagarjuna is going to be kind of like a soul brother from another millennia. And if you're going to have soul brothers, this is a good choice, I would say. We studied Vasubandhu and a sangha before, last practice period and some other ones. those people are a little bit more accessible because they're, you know, they're more experientially oriented and they go right sort of, you know, they go more in some sense to the psychological side. Nagarjuna is in some sense more ultimate in his approach. He uproots the thing more thoroughly. He's in the ultimate position. But he's, you know, he goes with the other, goes with the sturdy versions very nicely, but he's a little bit You almost have to give up more to study him if possible. So I guess I'm asking you to try to see if you have any problems, like I'm saying, do you have any problems reifying things?

[57:53]

And if so, then that might help you be willing to study this text, which of course, then what will you do with the text? They're probably like reified, right? And you're probably, you know, you may not reify it into a novel. You might reify it into something, well, I don't know, I won't tell you what you're reified into, but there's certain causes and conditions which cause people to reify things into certain things. And so I think you'll probably fall into those categories. And then the question is, will you believe what you've made? And if you do, then you're cooking. Then you got the problem. And then you look over at the problem, and then you're right in, you're in there, you know? Because end call-ons, taught systematically or unsystematically, are basically trying to do the same thing. They're trying to go in there and present something to somebody, watch them reify it, and then see if...

[59:02]

at the monarch butterfly, and see if they can feel their re-application of the story, and then if they can admit it, and work with it, and then release it. You know, working with a teacher helps. What time is it? Yes? Diane, I was right. Tormas, and Tormas are the cake that you use for opera. No. Sounds like it, but they're not. My experience. No, those cakes are called Tormas. That's right. But these things are not that. These things are like hidden teachings. Yeah, they're Tormas. Anything else?

[60:06]

Yes? I was wondering if you could talk about the word conditional and how that word is different. I'm not really sure I understand the word and it's used as an adjective and a verb. Well, this is getting perhaps into this text, right? No, it's okay. But I'll just say that one of the main distinctions here in what he's doing here is he's trying to teach dependent core writing, Nagarjuna is. Okay? And the last Karaka of chapter 24 is one who rightly discerns dependent co-arising, indeed, rightly discerns universal suffering, rightly discerns its origination, rightly discerns its cessation, and rightly discerns the path to liberation.

[61:31]

So what does it mean to rightly discern dependent co-arising? Again, Buddha taught dependent core rising and the Abhidharma taught dependent core rising in very neat ways. But they tended to think that the causes in the process of causation were themselves something that had an inherent causal power. But the cause was something that was a cause. And the cause caused a result. Right? Right? That's the ordinary way of thinking it. Cause has this power which causes the result. Nagarjuna says that although it's true that this won't happen without this, that what we usually call the cause and the result, the result will not happen without the cause. But what we usually think is that if the result won't happen without a cause, that the cause must have the power to cause the result. That's what people ordinarily think.

[62:35]

In other words, there really is a thing called a cause, which has something that the effect doesn't. So there is a causal agent here. So then A causes B, B causes C kind of thing. So if you look at the chain of causation of birth and death, what they got into thinking was that ignorance was a thing that caused karmic formations, which caused consciousness, which caused the senses, which caused name and form, and so on. Each one of these things was an active thing which caused an effect, rather than being a condition, which if you take it away, you won't get the result. That's the main difference. You do have to have certain conditions for things, but do the conditions themselves have to have the power to cause the result? Nagarjuna says, there are no causes of things. that are causes in the sense of having causal activity.

[63:38]

There are no such causes. And that's what he talks about right away in this thing. And then he goes into talking about the conditions and whether the conditions have within them cause of power or whether the causes have within them causal activity and whether you can have a cause you know well you can read it anyway we'll go into that but in some ways that the main thing see is that the chain of causation and the way things come together to create events you have to see how that happens right but then notice in the process do you think do you reify those causes that are coming together to make you or to make the situation The Buddha did not do that, but the system started to reify the causes coming together to create these illusions. So then they project the reification.

[64:41]

After they dismantled the whole thing, they projected the reification back on the process that they just broke up. So that's not rightly discerning the dependent core rising. And therefore, that's not rightly discerning universal suffering. It's not rightly discerning for origination, it's not rightly discerning liberation, and it's not rightly discerning the path to liberation. It's reifying this perfectly wonderful transcendent process, which we will do, given a chance. But if we do it and we can catch ourselves, then we have a chance to start turning the process around. We have to reason with ourselves, though, perhaps a little bit. And that's what he's doing. He's reasoning with the guilty parties. And so we have to struggle with this and let his teaching work us. And watch our minds as he starts to work us and loosen us up.

[65:44]

Watch our mind trying to grab something else. Watch the process. Watch the process. And we keep trying to get Nargajuna now. Yes? Does it mean that sort of, like, I suppose can college for about, well, maybe three weeks or couldn't do it? It would take me to try and inform me. Does it feel like A, when A works on B, it's like to produce C instead of A plus B equals C? The condition, you know, is it but it works on something else. Does it mean that you take it? Yeah, it's kind of like that. It's kind of like that, yeah. It's kind of like B can't happen without A does not mean A makes B happen. See the difference?

[66:51]

You couldn't be here without your mother, but your mother didn't cause you to be here. Because you also caused your mother to be here. Your mother couldn't be a mother if you weren't born, so are you the cause of your mother? Or is she the cause of you? Or are you both conditions for each other? Well, in fact, you are. She's a condition for you, and you're a condition for her. You're a condition for each other, and you couldn't have one without the other. Well, you actually could have her without her, but she wasn't without you, but she wasn't a mother before you were born. So it looks like a cause producing an effect, but actually it's a condition for an effect. and then the effect is a condition for the condition. And neither one of them have within them the power to create each other. But that's what people tend to think. So then you can't see dependent core rising properly because you're attributing existence and reality to the elements in the process. But really, sort of like non-graspable entities,

[67:55]

create non-graspable entities in this mysterious, magical way. But we don't like that because we can't grab it, so we keep converting it back into something we can grab. If you study Nagarjuna, he just, he is really gracious the way he just keeps moving it around and letting it go. It's wonderful. And you may need some help. I'll help you. You help me? Yes? A little while back, the world was refining and manipulating things, and the world is defenseless against that. I don't know if I want to say the world's not defenseless. So we have a way to see the feedback that the world, whatever you call things out there, is always letting us know. I don't think that's really what Carver is, but it seems to me in my life that I'm always getting feedback in order to look at things.

[68:59]

Yeah, but that feedback isn't defense. It's love. It's not defense. The world can't defend against you. The world cannot stop you from doing your thing. If it did, you would be all fixed up right now. You would be just right. So it feels like a silly... Yeah, because it's guiding you to liberation. The only thing that's causing a problem here is my reification of what's happening to me. Of saying, well, that feels like blah, blah and blah, blah, and then that's more than just my opinion. I'm giving reality to my opinion of what this is. You can say, well, what about the other people doing that? Well, it's not my problem. They're suffering with my problem. But I can't stop people from doing that.

[70:04]

I can't stop myself either. But I can catch myself at it. And one of the ways I catch that is that the world loves me and tells me something funny. And I look and it's usually that. Jesus? The other is self-identical in a contradictory way. or how we think, but then that we believe what we put in. And I think that's very helpful with reification. To me, the fact that it made more accessible for reification is that then we believe that the truth.

[71:14]

Yeah, that's reification. Reification is kind of a big word. But that's exactly reification. You believe what... You think something and you believe it's true. And most people can get around by believing that what they think is true. So they operate quite a bit of the time. And it works to some extent, but it is the source of all the problems. It's not all bad. It's just that it is the source of all that is bad. I noticed that one of the probable authors that you get is that alacuni, maybe myself, of reification in a particularly gross situation. But the fact is, reification is going all the time. It's my way of thinking and the other person's way of thinking.

[72:16]

And it gets me caught if I only grab onto the gross aversion It seems to me that over and over that comes up, like if you tell a story and I don't believe it. I reapply that by not believing rather than Realizing that my non-believing is also a rehabilitation.

[73:23]

Give me a reaction. You want a different reaction from the one you got? You got the whole room to react. What more do you want? Why do you think you got this big reaction? I think that makes somebody recognize. Something? What do you think they recognize? Maybe my own problem. Maybe their problem. Well, they probably reminded them of something about themselves. What do you think they reminded them of? getting into the body. Yeah. So I see you're trying to follow the thread of the way your mind works. And that is a good thing to do, I think. That is the path of liberation, is to go in and start discerning this process by which you attribute reality to what you're thinking, or non-reality to what you're thinking, but

[74:26]

If you say, what I'm thinking is not true, you still are conferring unreality on it. You're still in charge of saying real, unreal. In other words, the things you say are unreal, you think that's true. Right, so later on, when I like what you were saying, and that too, that's not fair. It sure leads you on a way of not falling down. No way. I was wondering what Stuart was saying no about. And the test is, when you, huh? You can hardly stand it. Well, that's part of what I was saying. You know, I was saying when you're upright, like I said, this person, this priest, I was talking to her and she was doing various things and I was actually kind of like encouraging her and me to be present.

[75:27]

And suddenly she stopped wobbling and she just sort of went, and she said, oh yeah. And she said, but I can't sustain this. Just be present. Forget about sustaining it. Just be present. And that is the gate to this, in some sense, more difficult realm that opens the realm of this of where, like our noon service chant, you know, where the mountain and the rivers and the grasses and the tiles and the pebbles are all coming in here and making you and you're resonating back to them and you can barely stand it. So that's why you start by trying to just be able to stand being present one moment, another moment. Just keep very present and it starts to open up and be present, you know. Don't worry about doing it again, just now. Be present with it. And you can stand it. And stand for a moment.

[76:27]

All you got to do is stand it for a moment. And then again. And again. And then as you do that, start to see, you know, start to watch. Do you verify the teaching of Dovin's engine? Is it happening? Are the mountains and rivers, are all beings coming there and helping you and supporting you and teaching you? And is that teaching then resonating back out of you and helping them? Does this create peace and harmony? Does this create intimacy with difficult-to-face situations? Does it get you in there, present in your body? Does it happen? Check it out. You verify. Don't just believe Nargarjuna and Dogen and certain other people. Get in there. Get in the place of your own body and mind, present, and do it again. Do it again. Check it out and see if you can be there and watch all things coming forward and act from there. Watch them come forward, witness their arrival, and then act from there. How does that work? Very hard. But that's what being proposed.

[77:31]

Yeah, well, again, trying to sustain it could be just another thing that arises in your faith. You could just be present and say, here comes this impulse to sustain it right now. Yeah, you can just be present with that. So there it is. I want to sustain this. And then everything goes away. It might come again and again and again, but anyway. That's just another dharma that one of the tricky little demons, the demon of sustain this, you know. Let's make this last. That's one of the demons. Okay? You can be present with that one. That's a real hard one to be present. The sustain is bliss. Okay? I hear you. Bye-bye. Now what? There's no demon even saying for the same thing, they have nothing. And that goes, they get used to like living in what's happening rather than what you can use or not.

[78:41]

That's what this text is about. That's what the first character is about. So I think maybe the next time we have a class, maybe we can start studying the text. We'll see how you feel. Now, time for politics. What time is it? The politics is some people do not feel it's necessarily good to have the group discussions during every five-day period. Some people maybe do want them every five-year period. I don't know what you feel. I don't know what's best. I really don't. OK? So I also don't know how to decide. One way to decide is for me to ask how many people tomorrow want to have group discussions and just see what the vote is. And then after that happens, then we can see.

[79:41]

I can now help me decide what to say next. I guess one question I could have. Question number one is, how many people feel that they want to have group discussions every five days? How many people want them every five days, every five days? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 15, 15. How many people would like to have a discussion tomorrow morning? 23?

[80:54]

So, in that case, how do the people who want it feel about not having it? How do you feel about it? Say, don't vote, just say how you feel. Do you know if they want to have it? Huh? Huh? What? Pardon? So I'm asking, I'm asking, well, first I'm just asking, how do the people feel who wanted it by not having it tomorrow? Another way, we go to Zazen instead. Soji and Zazen instead of small groups. Either way, it's OK with me, really. But if a little bit less than happening tomorrow morning, then I ask if you feel OK about not doing it. Pardon? Well, then you could have it next Monday or something.

[81:57]

Go to the next Monday. But I don't know how you feel about it. How is that? I mean, it's also possible that it might not hurt to split up any to those who want to do it and those who don't. I personally I personally felt that practice period and this practice period, too, that small groups are very helpful. But it may be the case that some people want to do a little bit more than the other people do. If anybody didn't want to do it at all, maybe they should come and tell me. But basically, it seems like most people are willing to go. And maybe some people would be more enthusiastic about going a little less. I don't know. But I do the . How about people who want to do a .

[83:00]

So in the next question, then, How many people would like it that those who want to go? . . .

[84:01]

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