at the beginning of one of the texts on perfect wisdom, it says, Call forth as much as you can of love and respect and faith. Clear away all your obstructions. and drop all your hindrances, and listen to the perfect wisdom of the gentle Buddhas taught for the welfare of the world, intended for heroic spirits. What I want to talk to you about today is, or what I want to talk to today, is I want to talk to your true simplicity.

[01:29]

I'd like to speak to your true simplicity, to my true simplicity. So I would like to ask all complicated thoughts and so on to, in a sense, consider stepping aside and letting me talk to the simple people in this room. Basically what I want to discuss is our radical simplicity and also, once we say that, to admit that there is, all around this simplicity, there is resistance to it.

[02:37]

So I want to recognize the resistance to the simplicity too. Last time I spoke here I talked about the three jewels and taking refuge in the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and I talked about three kinds of three jewels. This morning I'd just like to bring up at the beginning the first precept of a bodhisattva, the first precept of a person, a being who is working for the enlightenment of the entire world. The first precept of these beings is to go for refuge in awakening.

[03:47]

First precept. to return to complete, correct, and unsurpassable awakening, to return to the manifestation of truth, to return to the to the conversion of beings and the beings becoming free, to return to this. And to return to this is the same as to return to true simplicity. In the Zen school of the Buddha way, this means what we call zazen.

[04:53]

So our zazen practice, our practice of sitting meditation, is the same as simplicity and the same as returning to Buddha. Our practice is actually that simple, that we just are living in silence and stillness. And there is all the time, every moment, no matter what happens, there is someone sitting there serene and quiet.

[06:06]

When Buddha returned to himself, When Buddha allowed himself to be completely simple and just be a human being, when Buddha became the human being that he was, he saw that all beings were Buddha. And we living beings, if we want to understand our unity with the Buddha, which the Buddha saw and told us about, if we want to understand the unity of ourselves with the Buddha, first of all we might consider what the practice of Buddha is.

[07:28]

And the practice of Buddha, all Buddhas, is that they carry out their way with the whole world and with all living beings. So if we want to understand our unity with all Buddhas, we also must practice with the whole world and all living beings. our practice and our realization must be one with the whole world and all living beings. And hearing me say this, you may say, okay, and you may think about that, and that's fine. But the way to actually let your life, your practice, or not even your practice, just your daily life, the way to allow it to be one

[08:31]

with the whole earth and all living beings is not just to think about that and be willing to do that. Because you can never with your mind figure out how to do that. There's a much simpler way to be one with the whole earth and all living beings and thus realize and understand your unity with Buddha a much simpler way. In matter of fact, that way is just simplicity. Just be completely simple. If you just sit still in this moment, whether you realize it or not, There is an inner simplicity that realizes this oneness.

[09:40]

As Thoreau says, you only need to sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods, that all the inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you. If you just sit still long enough in an attractive spot in the forest, all living beings will show you that they are with you and you are with them. But if we move around from where we are, if we get more complicated than just being here, then being one with all beings or being one with even a few beings is pretty much a conceptual affair.

[10:50]

And still, you can't do it with all beings if you're engineering it. But if you don't engineer anything at all, You give up all engineering and you simply be what you are. All beings will show you themselves and they will show you that they are Buddha. If you're willing to be yourself like the Buddha was willing to be himself, you will understand all beings. But it's very difficult for us to be this simple because all around this radiant simplicity is resistance to that. I propose to you that

[12:02]

Total devotion to all living beings, total devotion to the welfare of all living beings is born of silent stillness. And also that silent stillness is born of total devotion to the welfare of all living beings. It takes that kind of total devotion to the whole earth and all living beings in order for us to let ourselves just be simply what we are. One Zen teacher, his name was Sawaki.

[13:06]

I like to call him so simple, Sawaki. He traveled all over Japan teaching people Zazen. He talks about himself and says, Sawaki practices Zazen in order to get other people to practice Zazen. in order to make his zazen stronger, shaves his head and puts on an okesa, this robe here. Sawaki practices zazen, and in order to make his zazen stronger, he shaved his head and put on this robe. That's all. He practices Zazen and gets other people to practice it too.

[14:14]

He possesses nothing that's not essential. The rest is blah, blah. He said... Animals are absolutely not different from us. Only we're a little more elaborate. Human beings are just animals that smoke. These human beings wouldn't worry so much if they just would return to this unique place and live in silence and serenity.

[15:28]

Besides taking care of this, all is vanity. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher. Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. We may not be able to ever stop even for a moment being involved in these vanities, but it is possible to remember that all is vanity.

[16:44]

It would also be vanity to try to stop being vain. That would be another vanity. Art that tries to get rid of vanity is vain art. Art that exposes one's own and all living beings' vanity is art that wakes people up to reality. And such art is not vanity. Such art is just very simple. It just admits that we are involved in vanities. In vain efforts in vain efforts to be something even slightly different from this. Now, as I said, I'm talking to this simple being in us

[18:07]

At the same time, from the outset I realized there is all around this simplicity resistance and vanity. Vain resistance to what we can never, ever get away from. Vain resistance to Buddha. So, I also say from the outset, it's much more useful to sense the resistance than to try to get rid of it. Simplicity can never be seen. It's not anything other than simply what we are.

[19:10]

You can't see it. You can't make an object of it. But by sensing all of our resistances, you can get more intimate with it. But if you think the resistances are something other than resistances, If you think all of our vanities are something better than vanities, then you don't understand that these vanities are outlining our radiant simplicity. But we don't like to admit that our vanities are vain. And because we resist being completely caught up and entangled in confusion and vanity, because we resist being completely entangled, we cannot realize that there's somebody who's not at all entangled and not at all vain.

[20:39]

There's always somebody here who's willing to be just like this. And if you resist being confused and entangled and vain, if you're unwilling and try to hold yourself above this defiled, evil situation, then you don't realize the one who is liberated from evil. I've talked before about the word evil as being life spelled backward, live spelled backward. Live spelled backward, evil. But if you're willing... completely to recognize and admit that you're nothing but evil, then you'll be liberated from evil.

[21:49]

If you can praise evil and honor evil completely, you will be liberated from evil. But aren't we all kind of squeamish about evil? Don't we all kind of want to get away from it, both when we see it in others and in ourselves, and especially, of course, when we see it in ourselves? Most people I know are at least a little bit aware, are a little bit willing to admit other people's evil. Like right now, without the slightest effort, I could see some evil person here. But it's not so easy for me to see an evil person really right here, real close here.

[22:58]

My own evil is not so easy for me to see. I'm a little bit afraid of my own evil, or quite afraid of my own evil. But my own evil is not the slightest bit different from my own liberation from evil. Buddhas are liberated from evil. Guess where they are when they're liberated from evil? They're in the middle of evil. They're not a little bit someplace else from evil. They're not squeamish about being right there. And therefore, when you're not squeamish about your own evil, and therefore liberated from it, you're also not afraid of other people's evil, and you don't have to separate yourself from evil people. Therefore, you can practice with the whole earth and all living beings.

[24:03]

Last summer I went on a little vacation with my wife. We went up to a little bit more northern Northern California, up in Lake County. We went to Clear Lake. And it's far enough away from San Francisco that it seems kind of like being in the country. And people have an accent, sort of like people in Tennessee. And my wife is Chinese and she's only been to, before that, before we went on this vacation, she'd only been to a drive-in movie once. And she couldn't even remember that she had been there. So we were driving around the lake and we saw this drive-in movie and she said, hey, maybe we could go to a drive-in movie. So we did. We went to a drive-in movie and it was a double feature.

[26:19]

and you pay by the vehicle. So we went to see these movies, and the two movies that were showing were Robin Hood and City Slickers. Those are the two movies. And when we got there, a lot of the other vehicles there were pickups, pickup trucks. And the pickup trucks park with the back of the truck towards the screen. And then the people sit up in the back of the pickup facing the screen. My wife thought, gee, that's really ingenious. Anyway, the first movie, Robin Hood, she thought, I won't say the person's name, but she thought the person who starred as Robin Hood did an incredibly bad job of acting.

[27:31]

But she also noticed that in a way he made everybody else seem really good. Like he made the sheriff of Nottingham seem like, you could see what an excellent actor the evil sheriff was. Robin's flat, you know, flat, one-dimensional goodness showed that the evil was radiance. So actually, he was very kind in his way of being so whatever you want to call it, because he made all the other actors look quite good, and particularly the most evil one looked very good. So although that movie was not too good, we were enjoying, for her, the cultural exposure of being with these people in pickup trucks.

[28:45]

And she kept calling it, instead of a drive-in, she called it a walk-in. We have walk-in refrigerators here at Gringos for the vegetables. The reason why I brought this story up, though, is because of the next movie. And the next movie had Jack Palance in it, who I think just died at 70. And in this movie, and if you didn't, Jack, great. In this movie, at one point, He looked at one of these city slickers who he was showing around. He was a big tough cowboy and he was showing these city slickers around the West.

[29:51]

And at one point he turned to one of them and he said something like, you know what the secret of life is? I think he said something like, you can correct me if anybody else saw, he said, just be concerned with one thing. Anybody remember me saying it differently? Just take care of one thing. So there it is. I mean, you know, that's what Buddhism is. Just take care of one thing. And that one thing is really...there isn't anything else but one thing. But we have to kind of pretend like to concentrate on one thing. If you concentrate on one thing, all the living beings will exhibit themselves to you.

[30:57]

You will realize that you're connected to all life, that all life is your life, but you have to concentrate on one thing. And you can't see what that one thing is, but you have to go ahead. and be totally devoted to it anyway. You can call it whatever you want, and moment by moment call it the same thing or different things, but in your heart, in your heart of hearts, you feel that you're only concerned with one thing. You're never concerned with anything else. You're that simple. You just shave your head and wear robes and sit still. And maybe you don't think you shaved your head, but in a way, I'll tell you, there's somebody sitting in the middle of you who has a shaved head and is wearing a robe and is not moving or making any noise who is completely peaceful and who is completely connected with all beings.

[32:05]

And everything else is just blah, blah. Everything else is just vanity. And again, all this stuff that you see, besides that, honor it. Honor this evil. Honor this vanity. If you don't like it, if you jack it up and say it's something more than vanity, or if you put it down as less than vanity, or a bad thing, then it'll stop you. The realization of this imperturbable The realization of this peace happens to those who no longer resist the resistance. Our vanity will save us from vanity.

[33:44]

You can spend your days and nights reveling in your vanity. But remember that it's vanity. This is vanity. Here I am indulging in my vanity. Well, go right ahead. Look in the mirror. Make yourself gorgeous. No problem. Enjoy it. Why not? It's just vanity. But if you think this is a serious business, then you're in big trouble. Now I'd like to give you another teaching from one of our ancestors. This is again a message to this radically simple, radically innocent being at the center of our life.

[35:03]

She can understand this. Don't worry if this human that smokes doesn't. This is a message from the great saint, the great savior, Nagarjuna. He wrote a set of verses once called The Fundamental Verses on the Middle Way. This work and his other works, but particularly this work, is the foundation of the philosophy of the enlightenment worker. In the first verse he says, At nowhere and no time can entities ever exist by originating out of themselves, from others, from both, or from a lack of causes."

[36:07]

Another translation. Are any existing things found to originate from themselves, from something else, from both, or from no cause? This is what I call radical simplicity. I mean this is scraping everything away and getting you down to where there's nothing, where you have nothing that's not essential. All this leaves room for is living. And when you're living, you're living. Does not is not.

[37:16]

Your living is just your living. You can't say that your living even comes from your living. You can't say your living comes from some other thing. Some other living, you can't say. You can't say it comes both from your living and other living. You can't say it comes from even no cause. You can't say anything about it. All you can do is live. All you can do is live. All we can do is live. That's all we can do. We can't do anything else. And beware of anybody who tells you that you can do more than that or less than that. Everything but that is vanity. And vanity is wonderful. And resistance to this simplicity is wonderful. No problem.

[38:20]

And this simplicity is extraordinarily, inconceivably dynamic too. Even though nothing can reach it and you can't say anything about it other than vain statements and resistances, it is totally in relationship to everything else. That's how simplicity is. That's why simplicity is so highly recommended This kind of life is like going out in a boat. It's just like riding in a boat. You work the oars. You raise the sail. You work the rudder. At the same time, the boat's giving you a ride.

[39:41]

And without the boat, you wouldn't be able, and nobody else would be able, to take a ride. But your riding in the boat makes the boat what it is. Well, there's no end to this simplicity, but one must stop anyway sometime and go on to the next thing.

[40:58]

Does anybody know a song about this? Yeah, how does that go? It goes... Just a second, I've got the words here. I think I do, anyway. Discuss. You were talking about complicity a lot. And I'm a college student right now. And in a moment in my life in which there's a lot of the cities .. I was just wondering about the people in the city and the basic career goals and project, just things like that that have been said about it.

[42:07]

When you live in a world that's very complex and complicated and where you're being asked to make lots of decisions, it's pretty hard not to be involved and to accept that. Actually, maybe it's not hard, but anyway, I would suggest you suggest... Did you hear his question? Yes. So, as you said, when you live in a world that's very complicated... and you're being asked to make lots of decisions, then I would suggest that you accept that you're being asked to do that. But I think it's good to immediately, in situations like that, immediately and constantly be returning to simplicity. And from simplicity, respond to those requests. realizing, if you can, realizing that the whole project, the entire project, is vanity.

[43:36]

Going to college is vanity. Not going to college is vanity. Building Buddhist temples is vanity. Tearing them down is vanity. Everything in life is vanity. Everything is vanity. Then from there, make a decision about what courses to take and whether to get a degree in this topic or that topic. And if you can really accept the vanity of all of our human enterprises, You can joyfully choose human enterprise and do it with your whole heart, just like a dance. But if you think this thing is more than vanity, you're going to get stuck.

[44:40]

Every turn, every decision, you're going to get stuck. And you're not going to enjoy anything. Everything's going to be misery. And you may make good decisions, bad decisions, but it doesn't make any difference. You're just going to be miserable. And everything's going to come from misery. So returning to simplicity, you can participate in the world more fully, more joyfully, more effectively, more enthusiastically. And you can go to college, and you can study, and you can learn. And being in class and being a student in class, you can save the world. And you can go to work and use what you learn or not use what you learn. The point is, everything but being yourself is just blah, blah. And if you think something's a big deal, then you're basically just caught by your delusions.

[45:42]

If you think it's a big deal to do this or do that, you're caught. However, to not think it's a big deal and to do this and do that is extremely helpful to you and to the other people you're doing it with. To be a doctor, to be a nurse, to be a mother, to be a father, to be a cook, to be a farmer, without taking yourself seriously and thinking you're doing something that's not vanity, then everything you do is a blessing. But if you have the slightest feeling or attachment to the importance of what you're doing, it just goes poisonous. That's all. Very simple. Extremely difficult, though, because our human mind is constantly, you know, creating these resistances to our simplicity. We think we have to do something. Therapists think... Yeah, basic suggestion is what we call... Exactly.

[46:59]

Exactly. Just do that. Just do that. Every time you notice you're in the middle of complexity, just go, 911. Do you understand? So mindfulness is necessary. You have to be mindful. What is the current quality of this soup? What kind of a sewer is this? What kind of a palace is this? What kind of a big deal is this?

[48:00]

What kind of an unimportant situation is this? What kind of a person that we don't want to be with is this? What kind of a person that we can't stand to be away from is this? So first of all, let's assess the situation and be aware of where we are. And then let's notice, is there any resistance to being here? Am I trying to get away? So be mindful of your vain attempts to get away from where you are. And also be mindful of what effects does that have on you? Does that make you miserable? Happy? Does that drain you? Inflate you? So basically, just pay attention to what's happening. And pay attention to what's happening so fully that finally it's not even like you over there paying attention to what's happening over here.

[49:02]

After a while, there's just what's happening. In other words, after a while, what's happening is just what's happening, and nothing but that's happening. In other words, simplicity. What do you think? Yes? in terms of the relationship that I keep feeling it's the only what I know is . Simplicity and emptiness. Yeah. Does simplicity grow out of emptiness?

[50:09]

Well, I can't say no, but I'm just groping for the most useful way to respond. I mean, emptiness is at issue here. Yeah, so what I said at the end of the talk, Nagarjuna's instruction to us is that there's nothing, that originates from itself, or from another, or from both self and another, or has no cause. That's not to say there isn't anything. That's not refuting that there's something. It's just saying that there's nothing really essentially there. that you can say, this comes from itself. Things are so much what they are that they completely obstruct themselves.

[51:14]

You are so much what you are that you empty yourself. And you're so much yourself that you're not even caused by yourself or by another or by both or by nothing. I mean, you're completely pure. Nothing can touch you because you are nothing but everything else. The only thing you aren't is yourself. In other words, you are completely liberated from yourself in your simplicity. You are completely obstructed by what you are. So if you settle into what you are, you completely realize your freedom from yourself. If you completely settle into your resistance, your vanity, your delusion, and your evil, and you're nothing but that, then you're completely liberated from all that stuff, and you become nothing but just light. What you really are when you're really full of yourself is you're just light.

[52:21]

That's all. And that's your Buddha nature. It's not that you are light. It's that you being the fact of you being you is light. And that emptiness is what makes it possible for us to be these, you know, whatever it is that we are. The boldest strut about this world, full of joy and color. misery and darkness. We can be this because everything's empty. We're totally free because everything's empty. If anything really did exist, we'd be stuck. But nothing does by itself, so nothing's stuck. So emptiness and simplicity

[53:29]

are intimate with each other. Emptiness is your entitlement to simplicity. It's why you have no problem of being just what you are. Just what you are is empty, and that liberates you from yourself. And that's all you have to be liberated from. And then you can really do your thing here in this world of appearances. Yes? Is there any nation born out of vanity? Well, I mean, yes, but it might be that actually, hard to think now, it may be that they're more like parallel than one comes before the other.

[54:41]

Let's see now. I think they're more like on the same level rather than one comes before the other. If you believe in the way you think, That's vanity. And if you believe the way you think, you feel isolated from other beings. You feel separate from other beings. So the basic delusion is the idea that you believe in your thinking. You believe your delusions. You think there's something other than vanity. In other words, you're vain. You think that what you think is what's happening. That's the same as feeling alienated because you believe that your separation, which you perceive, you believe that separation is true. In other words, you believe your perceptions. So vanity is a partner.

[55:43]

Vanity and alienation, or feeling separated from other beings, they're the same ballpark. They're the same level of development. One step prior to both of them is the belief in the perceptions. One step prior to that is the perceptions. The perception of separateness will not stop unless you have, even a lobotomy won't stop it. But certain kinds of regressive psychosis can stop it. But that's not healthy. It's better to stay at the level, the normal human level, of having a mind which concocts a sense of separation from other beings and accept that the mind's doing that. And if you accept that the mind is creating this separation, if you accept it fully, that is a testimony to your receiving the teaching

[56:50]

that this separation is empty, that there really isn't anything to this separation between us. This separation is only a mind-created illusion. We are one life. There is not two lives in this world. There is just one life. We have a perceptual equipment which sees many lives. That's why to be a Buddha we must vow to practice and realize the way with the entire earth and all living beings, every single one of them. That's the vow which is to start living or to dedicate ourselves to live like a Buddha. A Buddha is the mind and heart which is simply dedicated to and living with and realizing the way with all living beings in the whole earth. If you make that vow, and you keep making that vow, you start to live your life and you start to think that way.

[57:59]

You start to think that way, that vow starts to reshape your life. And as it reshapes your life, you would be willing to let yourself have a mind which creates the sense of separation. If you leave the sense of separation alone, that goes along with believing that it's vanity. If you won't leave it alone and you have to make it into a reality, that causes vanity. But if you can just say, my mind's creating a sense of separation, I do that. And not say, I do that and it's not real, but say, I do that and I believe it's real. I believe my delusions. If you admit you believe your delusions, that shows that you trust the teaching that these delusions are empty. And if you notice and admit that you believe these delusions, then you can notice that believing these delusions is the source of your misery.

[59:05]

You can see it. That's what's causing the pain, the sense of separation between us. That's the problem. That's why we do, that's why we push ourselves so hard We think we have to do something to be entitled to be loved, etc. Or we think somebody else has to do something to be entitled to be loved. Rather than we're all already the same thing called life, and there's nothing you can do about it but live it. But the way we live as human beings is that we in the middle of life are constantly creating this sense of separateness. We're going to keep doing that. And again, if you're just living your life, then you don't mind creating delusions because that's just part of this basic enterprise called living. But it's a very important enterprise because it causes a sense of separation and misery. So that particular place, we put a lot of energy into watching that one because that's the main sin that we do.

[60:14]

So we honor that sin and we realize we are nothing but that evil. If you're willing to be totally just that evil and be completely present with that mind which separates yourself from other beings, then you realize that that is your entry to life, your entry to light. And in fact, that is light when you are completely it. When evil is just evil, it is radiance. But if you resist it, then it's, well, to whatever extent you resist it, it becomes a black, dark, yes? But being present to it is what you're feeling with it, or feeling, I keep getting caught in feeling anger, okay? Anger and feeling anger, or feeling my anger, or feeling anger, but it's being present to it that we're seeing, right? I can't, I'm having a hard time getting feeling anger.

[61:16]

But being present to anger is . What's the difference between being anger and being, do you say, present to anger? What's the difference between those? Yeah, how do you, how do you, how do they strike you in two different ways, talking? I can, being present is something that I can, I understand. I don't know, it's different. Well, one you understand, and the other one you don't. Yeah. Okay. I understand being present to anger. What's that like, being present to anger? Watching it, seeing it, sitting with it. Seeing anger. What's it like? So you're observing the anger. So you say, this is anger?

[62:18]

Okay, now, when you say this is anger, at that moment, saying this is anger is not anger, right? Right. Observing anger is not anger. Observing anger is mindfulness, which is a good thing to do. Mindfulness is good, very good. It's not being anger, no. What did you say? What you said before is what you start as observing, there's still a separateness from the observing self to the anger, but then you come beyond that separation to the point where you just are anger. I didn't use the example of anger, by the way. No, you didn't. I was just talking about something. I was talking about delusion, but anger is a delusion, so it's okay. Anyway, when you're aware of anger or any delusion, at that moment that you say, this is a delusion, that's not a delusion.

[63:21]

That's correct. That's mindfulness. That's wisdom. That's good. Okay? That's good. However, that wisdom itself, although it's still very wonderful and very good, it's a little bit different from what it causes. What it causes, I shouldn't say what it causes, but what it opens you to. What does it open you to? It opens you to, what it could open you to, is liberation. Or what? It could also open, that's what the liberation is, is to be open to more delusion. People who are in bondage are not open to more delusion. They don't want more delusion. Or they want enlightenment. Or they want this delusion, but not that delusion. This is called being in bondage. What? No, wisdom liberates you from judgment.

[64:23]

To say this isn't good is more anger. Judgment can be observed too, and you can say this is judgment. To say this is judgment is not judgment. That's just the fact. Judgment is this is good and this is bad. I like this, I don't like that. That's judgment or anger. But just to observe the judgment is very good, very wholesome thing, and it sets you up to be liberated from judgment. And liberated from judgment means you can go ahead and judge. You can go ahead and judge. Yeah, right. Right. Live it up. You know? Be a human being. Human beings are nothing but deluded. They're just deluded. They're just into judgment 24 hours a day. That's a human being. You take a human being and remove their judgment for a second or an hour, you don't have a human being anymore.

[65:30]

You have a dead man. Buddhism is not about lobotomies and making you inhuman. Buddhism is about making you Buddha. Buddha is what happens to a human being when they finally are willing to be a human being and realize it. You don't have to fix yourself up. You'll never be able to do it. And I'll never be able to fix myself up. But it is possible. to just go ahead and judge when you realize that judgment is just that and there's nothing to it. That wisdom opens you up to letting go. And where do you let go? You let go of yourself into being a human being. Human selves, human beings that go around are all trying to not be human. They're all trying to be better than that, to be Buddhas or saints or I don't know what. You name it. All vanity.

[66:30]

All vanity. wisdom which comes to you by observing what you actually do watch what you do if you watch what you do you will see what you do all day long as judge you're violating precepts all day long buddhas see that they're violating all the time buddhas are making mistakes every moment in other words buddhas are willing to be human beings human beings are constantly evil You're surpassing evil all the time, I can tell. Just kidding. That's what human beings are trying to do. They're trying to surpass evil. They're trying to be better than evil people. That's what human beings are into. Even gangsters are trying to be less evil than the other gangsters.

[67:37]

That's what human beings are into, being less evil. Why don't you just go to the bottom of it and just say, okay, I'm evil, nothing but. Then what's going to happen to you? I'm evil, nothing but. That is the cry of freedom. Then you have a chance of being compassionate. then you have a chance of, rather than getting everybody to not be evil, you have a chance to realize that there is no such thing as evil. There isn't any evil. But there are evil acts. There isn't any such thing as anything. Everything's empty. And if you don't admit that you're caught in evil acts, then you'll never realize that there's no such thing as evil acts. You don't have to say there is evil acts to admit that you think there's evil acts. But not only do you think you're doing evil acts, but particularly think other people are doing evil acts, but you also think the evil acts that the other people are doing are really evil acts.

[68:49]

The basic evil is that you think there's other people. That's the most fundamental evil. Everybody does that. And not only that, but you not only think there's other people, but you think they actually are over there. That's even more evil. You're doing that all day long. That's the basic evil. If the people didn't do that, they would never be able to be cruel to each other. And they would just be calm and blissful. But that ain't the way we are. Let's face it. We do think there's other people, don't we? That's what a human being is. OK, well, I can go on like this, but people seem to be interested to say something. It's always a challenge to try and understand how much of this is just the confusion of language. Right.

[69:50]

It's all the confusion of language, nothing but. And this sense of separation leads me to think maybe I lived in or experienced perfect simplicity sometime, perhaps while I was in the womb. Yes? Is that what you're talking about, the experience before there was a sense of physical separation, before language and a sense of other people and having to breathe and being able to... Not having to breathe, no. No. Sense of desire, all those things seem to have been the result of birth. Well, this is kind of a complicated question, but I can give you a short course in Buddhist psychology, and that is that it's true that in some earlier stage of development,

[70:57]

which we are still connected to because we're causally related to it, we didn't separate ourselves from other beings. And by not separating ourselves from other beings, by not having that delusion of separation, the mind is perfectly calm. However, that stage of mind or that kind of mind has been present with us always and it still is present right now. It isn't that it's gone. It's just that in the realm of objective knowledge, we can't see it because it's not the realm of objective knowledge. The realm of objective knowledge that we usually walk around in and in that realm we create this evil of separation between ourselves and others, that realm is inherently disturbed. It's disturbed by the basic act of mind breaking itself into two and saying that one part of itself is outside of itself. That creates a disturbance in the mind, an irreparable disturbance in a sense.

[72:05]

But if you admit that you're doing it and see how you do it, you will be liberated from that disturbance. And the liberation from that disturbance will reunite you with the realm of mind which is constantly present, which is never disturbed, because it doesn't make objects and doesn't separate itself from others. But it doesn't separate itself from itself. The others that we're separated from is our mind. We cut our mind in two and say that part of it's outside and part of it's here. That creates this disturbance. So at earlier stages of evolution, at earlier stage of our own recent development, and also right now in every moment, there is a mind which does not see itself as outside itself, which has not split itself into two and which is calm. That is a constant resource of us. We yearn for it all the time. And when you hear about simplicity, that part of your mind, although it can't hear that

[73:09]

those words as outside of itself, it kind of goes . It responds. Because it's actually the reason why you're talking that way. It's saying, come home. And if you're willing to admit that you're caught in delusion all the time, that's partly under the sponsorship of the part of you that's not caught by delusion. But this is hard to understand. We have to sort of study this stuff and think about this stuff quite a bit because this is, for a lot of us, a total reversal of the way we've been thinking for whatever number of years. So part of this thing is to reverse the way you see things and to enter into the paradoxical nature of our life and enter into the tension of our life and learn how to practice meditation so that you can stand these contradictions which are set up.

[74:13]

And if you can expand these contradictions and settle into them, you'll be released from them. I don't know who's next. Everybody could start raising their hands again. I keep thinking about what you said about concentrating on one thing. and it keeps coming to me as you're talking about the importance of that and whether it could be like in meditation I suppose it could be like the answer to all of this and maybe concentrating on a flower or whatever and initially I was thinking about it in life when you said that about nothing to do you know right and then it came to the thought came to me that service would be something to concentrate on yeah yeah concentrate on service concentrate on being totally devoted to the welfare of others perfectly good thing to concentrate on and never and never do anything like that ever

[75:19]

or not never do anything with that, but be always concentrated on what's beneficial to others. Think about that all the time, no matter what you're doing. Even when you're scratching your nose, have scratching your nose be an expression of devotion to others. When you turn a TV on, have that be devotion to others. When you turn this turn signal on, devotion to others. When you're confused, devotion to others. Always be doing one thing. Whatever it is, you can call it whatever you want. You can also call it anything. Just be devoted to one thing. In other words, just be unified, just practice oneness. That's hard. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard. You raised your hand, but the lady next to you was before you. Why do we have a chance to be separate? Pardon? Why would we ever choose to be separate? Separate?

[76:20]

Choose to be separate? We don't choose to be separate. It's built into our evolution. I think that the one advantage is not of separation. Separation is not a good deal, actually, for us, but it comes along with something that is kind of a good deal. You know what that is? knowing things. In the known universe, what knows things? Like an infinitesimal portion of the universe knows things. It's this mass of living tissue, most of which, a lot of which anyway, is human beings. Maybe the whole universe has conjured up some tissue that can know the universe.

[77:22]

This is the wonder of life, one of the wonders of life. Not the only wonder of life, but one of them. Not just, no, not consciousness, objective knowledge consciousness. There's another consciousness which is the consciousness like, I don't know about trees, but I, just to a great extent, trees and also our own body, we have a lot of consciousness which doesn't know things, which is just simply aware. It's not aware of something over there, it's just aware. It's just alive and aware. It's just radiance. It's just light. This can be transformed in a special kind of light, which is a light of knowing an object. Why the universe set it up to have human beings and some animals, I think, play the role of being a way that the universe could be aware of itself, why it wanted to do that, I don't know, but it was quite a feat and has done it.

[78:26]

And we are the carriers of this unusual thing. called objective knowledge. We can do that. There's this Greek myth about this. It's also in the Bible. Adam and Eve are walking around, having a real good time. And I don't know what they were doing, but you can imagine what they were doing. Imagine. Whatever you want to think of, they were doing. I'm telling you, they were doing whatever you think of, except the one thing is, they didn't know they were doing it. And so anyway, Eve says to Adam, wouldn't you like to know what this was? Wouldn't you like to know what this is? It's fun, isn't it? Isn't it great? Wouldn't it be nice to know what it was, too? And Adam says, yeah, that would be neat. Well, just bite this apple, and you will know.

[79:27]

what this bliss is. Of course, as soon as they know what the bliss is, they're out of bliss land. Because the bliss did not have knowledge. OK? That bliss is in darkness. What kind of darkness? The darkness of not having the light of seeing objects. And the myth, the Greek myth of amor and psyche, you know that myth? Amor, eros, bonded with this mortal event called psyche. Love bonded, love met, and was in the embrace of, and totally enraptured with, and psyche was totally enraptured with love. They were in union, blissful, dark union. But they didn't know each other. They didn't know what it was that they were in union with. And so Psyche's sisters came to visit and were jealous of Psyche having this good time and said, you know, you should find out what this thing that you're so enraptured with is, because it might be terrible.

[80:43]

So little by little, she said, maybe you're right. So then she brought the light to her love. And she saw her love. And her love was wonderful. However, she instantly lost it. First of all, she wounded it. Then she lost it. And the rest of the story is about the reunion, the reunion with this mind which is happy but doesn't know anything, with the mind which now knows things but is miserable and separated from them. That reunion is spiritual practice. And the Bible, how do you live with being kicked out of Eden now that you have knowledge? That's the teaching of the Jewish religion. And the teaching of the Jewish religion is, one of the teachings of it is, everything you do, anything you do besides working for union, for reunion, is vanity.

[81:45]

All that counts is reintegration and reunion. Everything else is just vanity. You know, is this realm of objective knowledge being spun around and around and around? Objective knowledge. Build castles, grow crops, have kids, die, be born. It's just endless realm of separation. Endless misery. All vanity. The only thing that's worth anything is to realize that this is vanity and drop through the floor and reintegrate You can't go back to Eden. You can't go back to the darkness. You can only go forward, and that's the one thing. It's called going forward. You can call it a million things. Going forward can be called Buddha way. It can be called lit for the benefit of all beings. It can be called simplicity. The point is, it's straight ahead, and nobody knows what direction that is, and everybody knows what direction that is.

[82:49]

It's straight ahead towards reunion. Everything else is simply vanity and misery. So we don't want separation. Separation came along with the realm of objective knowledge. We didn't want that, but that's the price. Now, my theory is that the reason why it came along with it, maybe it didn't come along with it right away. It might have taken quite a while for it to develop, but separation and alienation make it so uncomfortable for many people to live in a sense of nonintegration that it becomes a goad for us to work towards reintegration, because reintegration is quite difficult. It's quite difficult to go around and admit how deluded you are. But if you hear that if you will admit it, that you will be free of this misery which is caused by separation, maybe you'll do it. But if it weren't for separation and all the problems that happened because of separation, we might not be willing to do the work, the hard work of admitting that we're a deluded evil person.

[84:02]

You don't have to be a deluded evil person. You just have to be honest. If you look at what you do, you'll notice that you're constantly involved in various trips of separation, alienation, and all kinds of neuroses and psychoses. If you don't notice that you're doing these things, then are you better than those other people? Well, I hate to say it, but I am, they say. I'm actually not as bad as some of those people. But it's not so much that I'm not as bad as those people. It's actually I just don't want to be as bad as those people. I'm afraid of evil. I'm afraid of delusion. I want to be better than that and hold myself above the mud. But Buddha's not afraid to be down in the mud. Why don't you come down with Buddha? Buddha's down there completely submerged and completely radiantly liberated from the mud. So don't worry. It's okay.

[85:06]

You can be a human being. And the more wisdom you have, the more you see what a miserable situation it is, and the more you see what a miserable situation it is, the more you're willing to not run away from it and stop doing vain things to distract yourself from something that you don't have to be afraid of at all, called evil. Evil is not to be eliminated from this world. If you eliminate evil from the world, there won't be any people left. Oh, and there also won't be any leopards, or wolves, or pumas, or owls, or eagles, or salamanders, or deer, or sharks, or whales, or pine trees. I don't think pine trees are evil, actually. But they'll get all disturbed when all the evil ones go away, and they'll die of heartbreak.

[86:09]

Ah, yes. I used to be that way, too. Wasn't it great? Right. Right. Oh, you missed my lecture. Didn't you? Are you there? Oh, so you heard the thing about human beings or animals that smoke? That's me. I really thought my job was being a good witness with them to learn not to smoke, to conquer things like, you know, having a great man again or partying with friends or going out, staying out all night or whatever it is.

[87:15]

Yeah. Because that made me a bad person. And when I get to thinking that I'm a bad person, then everything goes out of whack because I don't go to the vendors and think, oh, I'm not good enough to go in there, you know. I've got to be real clean up here before I get in. I've got to get back on track before I go and sit. Uh-huh. What I've recently been finding, which is excruciatingly painful, is the part with smoking. Just recently, I... Do you smoke? Oh. Yes, I do. I used to be a smoker, a known smoker who smoked. And I was like, oh, no, I'm not a smoker, but I have to have a cigarette now and again. And I like to roll muck myself. And I just found myself smoking this week, like really smoking, like, God, it's just kind of the ritual of doing it.

[88:15]

And it just kind of disappeared the desire for me to do that anymore. You know, it's like, because I wasn't feeling I shouldn't be doing it anymore, it just kind of changed. I don't have to do this now. And I found that one of the things I hate most is pain. I try to, I've been trying to spend my life avoiding and conquering my relationship to pain. And I find that Yeah. Right. Yeah. I shouldn't be in pain, so therefore I've got to change it. Start going, this is pain, this is pain, this is pain. And it just changed.

[89:17]

It was very different. I forgot what pain was. Pain just wasn't pain anymore, like I knew it. That's how I was at that moment. Just really bizarre. And it's just very different. For me, it's like, how can I, you know, you say, stay with one thing, and I go, well, I have so many things. How can I pick one? I want to stay with them all. That can be your one thing. It's kind of like if you stay with one thing, you're not being attached to it. And I found that in sitting there... They like to just have all of those things, but not actually do anything about them. Just have them be there. And they did their thing, and I was able to be part, but then actually kind of jumping on board. Yeah, that's another version of doing one thing. Doing one thing is not doing anything about anything.

[90:19]

Whatever is happening, don't do anything about it. That's the one thing that a lot of Zen students do. They just don't do anything about anything. Meantime, they're doing stuff all day long, right? They're eating a hamburger or they're not eating a hamburger. They're being a vegetarian or they're being a, you know, carnivore. They're doing stuff one way or the other all day long. But they don't do anything about what they're doing. Somebody is not doing anything. And that's the one thing that they do. They're totally concerned with the one who doesn't do anything. And that'll allow you to completely be the deluded person you are. Yeah. I'm scared a little bit about judgment. So I was watching this program on TV one day. It was on a board-court show. I can't remember, Donnie, you know, I can't remember what it was about. It was for the couple who...

[91:23]

she basically videotaped her having a sexual relationship with a different man. It was a big studio and press and television. And what I saw was I was watching the audience and I was watching the hook to an article with her and her husband and When they stole the school, people, it was like a banished inquisition almost, just completely judging their act. And I just felt that, I'm sure occasionally, we have thoughts of videotaping or that sort of thing. It happens once in a human. And so, I just saw two people sitting there being honest with the way it was, whether it was an addiction or a blood clot or whatever it was. For me,

[92:27]

I couldn't separate myself from Kara or from her, but I saw within the audience the state and condemnation of what they were doing. That, just for me, and just saying that was really uncomfortable for me. I just sort of think separation and judgment go along. And it happened a lot on your show, too. Yeah. It happened a lot on my shows. People stayed up. There's some questioning that goes on about to actually be judged. Yes, but that happens a lot on these shows. Everybody's set up to literally be judged. And then you judge that.

[93:30]

So you separated yourself from the people who were...

[93:35]

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