As usual, as we chant the verse--this verse that we just chanted at
the beginning of speaking about the teachings of the Buddha, the
Tathagata-- I’m struck by the words “taste the truth of the Tathagata’s
words.”  Hearing the Tathagata’s words, or hearing what some people who
are living today say the Tathagata’s words are, when we hear those
words, even hearing those words is said to be a rare, a rarely wonderful
event. Having them to listen to, and accept, and remember is
wonderful.  And at the end it says,  “I vow to taste.” So, it’s like we
hear the truth, but sometimes when we hear the truth, we don’t
necessarily taste it.  So, it’s possible, according to this verse, the
implication is we can hear the teaching, and actually taste it in our
body.  And, again those are some other words of the Tathagata, that
after you listen to and study and remember and accept these words, it’s
possible that these words become your body.  So you walk around, maybe
remembering what you heard, but also tasting, tasting the truth of the
words.  And that strikes me at the beginning— to hear that we vow to
taste the truth.  
    And this process of the teaching of the Buddha
becoming us, that rather than just hearing it and appreciating it, it
takes over our body and mind and we become the teaching.  This process
is sometimes called the process of practice, or the process of
meditation.  So you hear the teaching, and then by doing various
meditation practices, you make yourself able to let the teachings into
your body and mind deeper and deeper, and that process is sometimes
called in Sanskrit or Pali, bhavana.  Bhavana is a general term which
can be translated as ‘cultivation’ or ‘meditation’.  But literally,
etymologically, bhavana is made from the basic word bhava, which means
‘to be’, and bhavana  means ‘to become’, so the Buddhist meditation is
to become a Buddha.   So that when you talk, you taste the truth of the
Tathagata’s words; you feel that you have become…that you have become
the Buddha, the Buddha way. We vow to become the Buddha way.  At the end
of the talk today, we’ll do another chant, and the last line of that
chant is, “The Buddha Way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.”  So,
there it is, the possibility of a life of becoming the Buddha way.  
  
 The process of becoming the Buddha way, the process of cultivation of
the teachings, I sometimes present has having two main styles of
bhavana, two main styles of cultivation which can be presented
separately, but in the end are united.  These two styles of bhavana,
these two styles or aspects of becoming the teaching, or letting the
teaching become us, one is called concentration or tranquility practice,
tranquility meditation, samadhi; the other is called wisdom, or
insight, prajna, or vipassana. These two types of meditation can be
practiced separately, and in the end, joined in a wonderful, harmonious
way so that the deepest wisdom can be realized.  About this time last
year, I vowed to spend the year of 2002, and, uh . . .
    (I just
want to stop for a moment there and say, when I think of the year 2002,
it’s like a meditation; it’s like a wisdom meditation because I love
that number, 2002.   And now it’s gone, sort of.  I can’t write that…
well, I can write it, actually, but I really miss that year; it’s gone, I
lost it.  Did you, also, lose it? So now we have 2003 (laughter).  
  
 This is a forecast: meditation on this kind of thing, of how you keep
losing these years, this kind of meditation is the basic meditation of
wisdom practice.  So last year [I studied] samadhi or tranquility
practice; this year, I hope to study steadily, consistently, together
with some other people, wisdom practices.   
     I said this before
but I want to say it again as a kind of summary, and that is that the
calming practices, the calming meditations, for me, in essence, are ways
of learning to direct our attention towards giving up discursive
thought. When we give up discursive thought, we become calm. Becoming
calm, tranquil, but not just calm and tranquil, but calm and tranquil
and buoyant, and flexible, and bright and joyful; this is what is
included in calming practices.  A state like that of being calm,
concentrated, stable, buoyant, flexible, in body and mind, full of joy
and light, such a state which we call tranquility, is the fruit of
learning to give up discursive thought, and such a practice is the basis
of developing Samadhi.  Okay? You’ve heard this before, some of you, so
I wanted to say that because I won’t be talking so much about samadhi
this year.  So please remember that side. That’s part of the practice,
too, of becoming the Buddha way, to learn how to give up discursive
thought, and again, the fruit of learning that is the state of
tranquility and brightness, and so on.  
    Discursive thought, I
like the etymology of it.  It means ‘running about,’ or ‘coursing
about.’  So discursive thought is the type of thought where we’re
running about.  So running about in our head, wandering around in our
head, which we often do, right?  This discursive thought-- giving that
up, we become calm.  Over on the other side, the other type of
meditation, the wisdom meditation, the insight meditation, is to learn
how to use discursive thought, actually use that running around type of
thought to understand the nature of phenomena.  So the fruit of learning
how to use your discursive thought --and you actually have to use
discursive thought to learn how to use discursive thought in such a way
that the fruit is wisdom, insight, understanding.  And you also have to
use discursive thought to learn how to give up discursive thought.  So
there’s some discursive presentation, there are teachings for discursive
minds to teach them how to give up discursive thought.
     But
anyway, when you give up discursive thought and are calm, you don’t
necessarily understand; you don’t necessarily become wise.   But in
certain ways of using discursive thought you will become wise.  And in
the end, the path is to join the fruit of giving up discursive thought
with the fruit of using discursive thought, so you join wisdom and
samadhi, wisdom and tranquility.  And in that unity of wisdom and
tranquility, a supreme wisdom arises, the wisdom where you actually
become the teaching.  
    Part of what I am doing today, I think, is
to try to encourage you and me to be inspired and be enthusiastic about
learning to use our wandering mind in such a way as to develop wisdom. 
In other words, I’m trying to encourage the practice of wisdom.  I may
say this again, but the reason why I’m trying to encourage it is that I
think there needs to be a little encouragement for it.  Because my
general impression of looking into my own mind, and hearing other
people’s expressions, is there is some difficulty for practicing
wisdom.  Practicing tranquility is sometimes also difficult.  But after
you give up discursive thought, actually, it’s not difficult anymore.
But practicing wisdom may continue to be difficult even up to the very
highest or almost the highest levels.
     Now the reason why it’s
difficult, or I would say one reason why it’s difficult is because it is
difficult for us to pay attention to what we’ve been ignoring for a
long time.  And in order to become wise, people who are not wise have to
turn away to some extent from the way they have been… not necessarily
turn away from the way they had been looking at things, but look at the
way they had been looking at other things in a different way. And look
at things you haven’t been looking at; for example, how impermanent we
are.  
    Now I begin, trying to encourage you. Here we go (he
laughs).  Let me know later if you feel encouraged, or even in the
process, if you feel encouraged, you can yell out, “Encouraged.”  You
can also yell out, “Discouraged.  Hard, hard, oh it’s hard.”  First of
all I want to encourage you, and then I’m going to tell you about some
hard stuff.  So if you’re encouraged enough, you’ll be hearing some real
hard stuff for the rest of the year.
    This morning someone gave
me a card, that had, I think it had like pine trees with snow on it. 
Those kind of cards, I’ve seen a lot of them lately.  And on the inside
of the card, it said, “Peace On Earth.”  And I heard something in my
head, “ As it is in heaven.”   “Peace on Earth.”  And I thought, “Oh,
this is the kind of card people send during the ‘holiday’ season”.  
‘Holiday’ is built on the word ‘holy’.  It’s a holy day.  These are the
holy days.  Now some people say, “No, these are Christian holy days,
they’re not my holy days.”  But anyway, at any given point in the year,
someplace on the earth, some people think, “It’s a holy day.”  I think
there’s not a day that passes that somebody’s not thinking it’s a holy
day.  
    Matter of fact, we have one person here at Green Gulch who
is permanently programmed to think that way.  Every day that person
thinks, "It’s a holy day."  And in case anybody forgets, this person
reminds us. Actually, we have more than one person like that.  Here’s
one.  Every day this guy reminds us it’s a holy day.  Every day this
woman reminds us it’s a holy day.  Every day that guy, Manjusri
Bodhisattva reminds us it’s a holy day.  Every day Sakyamuni Buddha on
the altar reminds us it’s a holy day, and all over the temple we have
these statues and pictures saying, "Today is a holy day. This is a Zen
Center, every day is a holy day, don’t forget it.”  And during holy
days, people give cards saying “Peace on Earth.”
     Somehow on holy
days, people think about peace.  All over the world, actually, people
are interested in peace.  Certain people who say we’re going to war,
say, ‘I’m interested in peace, all I care about is peace, but we have to
go to war for it.”  On the holy days we don’t say “War on Earth”, we
say “Peace on Earth”, and “Goodwill to Humans.”  This card that was
given it me, it was a Sierra Club card.  And I don’t know if this is the
motto of the Sierra Club.  And then it says, “ To explore, to enjoy,
and to protect the earth.“  Can we enjoy this earth, and can we live in a
way that we can enjoy this earth, and protect it?   Peace, do we want,
together, to have happiness, and peace?  Do we want peace and happiness
to pervade every being and place? Do we want that?  Sometimes we do.
Sometimes we really want everybody to be happy. That’s like what happens
on a holy day.  
    Some intellectual historians suggest that his
country was conceived in liberty, that the people who wrote the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of this government,
actually, at that time, believed, or had a belief that all humans are
created equal, and they meant by equal, that they’re all created with a
common sense of sympathy and moral feeling for each other.  But not just
for each other, but for others.  They believed that that’s the way
people were.  They even went so far as to believe that Americans were
even that way more than most.  A little bit of a problem there, but
anyway, they believed that they were the leaders in sympathy and concern
for the welfare of others.  And they believed that everybody basically
has that sense and were created equally that way.  We all have that.
  
 I think, you know, it’s true that we all have that sense of sympathy
for others in us. But, we may have been ignoring it for a long time, or
we may just ignore it once in a while, or we may just ignore it quite a
bit.  So when I read that statement that there was this belief in a
sense of sympathy for others, when I read that, I thought, “Yes, but,
certain other feelings, for example, self-righteousness and hatred, can
in a sense seem to obstruct those feelings of sympathy for others.” 
When we feel self-righteous for others, and hate them, it sometimes
obscures—not necessarily, it might not—but it sometimes seems to obscure
the feeling of deep sympathy and compassion for them.  
    Does
that make any sense?  When we feel like, “I’m right; over here is right,
and over there is less right,” or “way off,” or “stupid", that feeling
might lead to a “I hate you for being stupid, I hate you for being so
stupid as to disagree with me.  How foolish.”  These feelings that can
occur in human beings may obstruct this deep sense that we really would
like everybody--including those who disagree with us—to be at peace and
to be happy.  Even though there are moments when the clouds clear and we
put aside our self-righteousness and say, “Okay, alright, I love you,
I’m devoted to you and I want you to be happy. Just forget about it for
the moment that you’re wrong and I’m right . .  I mean, I’ll forget
about it.”  
    Self-righteousness, and the hatred which grows out
of it, and the violence which grows out of the hatred, guess where it
comes from?  (He laughs). . .. Guess!    What? Fear?  You can add fear
to the list.  You can either have self-righteousness, fear, hatred; or
fear, self-righteousness, hatred; or fear directly go to hatred, skip
self-righteousness; but sometimes a little self-righteousness supports
the fear, makes you feel good about it.  Sometimes we’re taught when
we’re children, "Don't hate the people, but then, you know, under some
circumstances, when you’re self righteous, go ahead."  Fear,
self-righteousness, hatred, and so on, they are based on ignorance. 
They are based on a lack of wisdom.  They are based on a lack of
wisdom.  They are based on a lack of seeing things the way they actually
are.  
    And when you see things the way they actually are, I
suggest to you, (he laughs), you will not be self-righteous.  Wise
people, strangely enough as it seems they would be entitled to it, are
not self-righteous.  Buddhas are not self-righteous.  They don’t sit
there and think, “Well, I’m a Buddha, so of course I understand, so you
know…I hate people.”  (laughter)  No, “Buddhas understand” means they
can see the way things really are.  And when they see the way things
really are, they see, “Oh, we’re all together in this.  I’m nothing but
all these people. And if they’re ignorant, I’m nothing but a bunch of
ignorant people.  I’m nothing but that.  I’m not the slightest bit
different from that.”
    And out of being nothing but a bunch of
ignorant, suffering, people, this great feeling of love arises, wishing
that these people who are nothing but what the Buddha is, would be free
of this misery that arises from their ignoring the way things are. 
Buddha’s wisdom leads Buddha to love all beings completely.  And that
love leads Buddha to wish that all beings would open to the wisdom.  So
Buddha appears in the world because Buddha wants all of us to have
Buddha’s wisdom so that we will love completely every single being and
protect every single being without exception and without limit, just as
they do, because of their wisdom.  Their compassion is completely
unhindered and they want us, they wish us, to open to Buddha wisdom
which they will teach us.  
    But first of all they want us to open
to it.   Buddhas, actually, the first thing they work on is opening us
to it, rather than put it out there when we don’t want it.  They don’t
want us to reject it; that is not good.  So first of all, they wish, and
they appear and try to be with us in any way that can open us to the
wisdom of the Buddhas.  I’m not the Buddha, but the Buddha is using me
to talk about opening to Buddha’s wisdom.  And I’m telling you, don’t
worry, if you don’t want to hear the teachings of the Buddha’s wisdom
when you hear it  (because a lot of people don’t want to hear because
it’s hard to hear, because it’s kind of an insult to your view of the
world because Buddha’s wisdom is different from the way we usually see
things). So it’s a little hard to have the Buddha say, "You know, this
is the way it is,” and you say, “Yikes, I don’t get that.”  
    So
first of all, Buddha wants us to open to Buddha’s wisdom, which when we
become it, will make us really, really want peace in the world, and not
be afraid of the people we want to be at peace with because we
understand our actual relationship.  And then, Buddha wants to
demonstrate it, Buddha wants to offer it, so Buddha offers it and Buddha
usually offers it by talking our language, speaking to us in our
conventional language.  So Buddha needs to use conventional speech to
help us, so Buddha does.            And then Buddhas wish that, they
want us to awaken to the wisdom, and then they want to help us become,
actually enter into the wisdom and become it.  This is what Buddhas’
want, and they want this because of the way they see things, namely that
we are all interconnected and peace is possible, and they want it for
us, and they want us to work for it with them, together, work for peace
and harmony together.  They want that. Bud it’s hard.  Wisdom work is
hard.  Not always, but it may be hard to open our eyes, our own eyes, to
what we’ve been ignoring for a long time.   It’s not pleasant,
necessarily, to open our eyes to our lack of wisdom.   
    So now
we’ve already started here at Green Gulch an intensive study of Wisdom
teachings this year, and we may continue if we live, and people are
having a hard time with these wisdom teachings, right?  Aren’t they
hard?  Yeah, they’re hard; they’re having a hard time.  But that makes
sense to me, that you would have a hard time learning a whole new way of
seeing the world, but I’m trying to encourage you to be patient with
this difficulty because of the great fruit of wisdom which will help
you, and help all beings, but it’s hard.
Even while I’m bringing
these teachings up to people, handing them pieces of paper which have
these teachings on them, and they look at the teachings and they go,
“ewwhk, gyech.”  Like I said to somebody after the last class, and we’ve
been chanting these in service, too, so we have classes discussing them
and sometimes after class we go back and chant them again, so I asked
this person, “Do you think we can go back after class and chant them
again? And they said, “I don’t think so.”  So I said okay, and we took a
break and didn’t chant it.  I don’t want to force it on you too hard,
so let me know if it’s too hard. I’ll stop, we’ll have a break, and you
can give up discursive thought and relax.  Matter of fact, why don’t you
do that right now.   (Silence for 3 seconds)  Our recess is over.  
(laughter).  
    So anyway, these are difficult teachings, so here
they are.  But some people are coming to me, and telling me stuff like,
“You know, I’m really suffering.  I’m really suffering.  In this world
today, with all this violence, and this extreme need for peace and
harmony in this world, I feel that these teachings are exactly what we
need to hear.”  This is encouraging for me to hear, and I think, “These
teachings which are so difficult, and which you don’t even understand
yet?”  But I feel that some of these people who are telling me this,
encouraging me to continue, maybe they have a glimmering, a sense that
these are really the teachings which will help the world, which will
turn people around.  But then I also thought, “Well, maybe they just
think, ‘Well, we’ve tried everything else, but we never tried this
stuff, this is definitely new material, so maybe this will work, I hope,
I think that this is really going to help.’”  
    But then I also
thought, “The very people who are telling me this are they very people
who are suffering a lot.  And maybe in their deep suffering, the fact
that they are aware of their deep suffering helps them open to these
teachings and see the great possibility of these deep and difficult
doctrines.  And in the scripture that we’re studying which is called,
“The Scripture Unraveling the Thought of Buddha,” the scripture says
over and over, “deep and difficult dharma”. This is hard stuff; this is
not easy.  These great Bodhisattvas who understand it are asking these
questions because they sense that beings have trouble, so they’re
modeling interest in this difficult dharma.  
    And those go
together:  awareness of our deep suffering goes together with opening to
deep teachings.  If we are closed to our own suffering and the
suffering of the world, then we don’t want to hear about these teachings
because they require us to be open.   And if we open to the teachings,
then we open to the suffering.  And if we open to the suffering
wonderfully, we open to the teaching.
    Nobody said that they were
encouraged.  (feeble “Encouraged.”  Reb laughs).  Do you want to hear
about these wisdom teachings? . . . . . (aside) Got a sutra book there? 
So this is the Samdhinirmocana Sutra, The Scripture Unraveling the
Thought.  The Sutra Showing the Deep Intention of the Buddha’s
Teaching.  And this is Chapter 6 of the scripture.  And it begins by
saying:  “Then the Bodhisattva Gunakara questioned the Bhagavan. The
Bhagavan is one of the epithets of the Buddha.  Bhagavan, when you say,
Bodhisattvas are wise with respect to the character of phenomena,
Bhagavan, just how are Bodhisattvas wise with respect to the character
of phenomena?”  
    So, the Bodhisattva Gunakara is asking the
Buddha, “What is wisdom of the Bodhisattvas, and how are they wise, and
wise about what?”  Wise about the character, or nature, of phenomena. 
Wisdom has something to do with understanding the nature of phenomena.
Bodhisattvas are beings who wish to become Buddhas because of their deep
love for all beings.  These compassionate beings want to develop
wisdom, and their wisdom is about the nature of phenomena.  So the
Bodhisattva is asking how Bodhisattvas are wise.  
    The question
goes on:  “Just how are Bodhisattvas wise with respect to the character
of phenomena, and for what reason does the Tathagata designate a
Bodhisattva as being wise with respect to the character of phenomena?”  
The Bhagavan replied to the Bodhisattva Gunakara, “Gunakara, you are
involved in asking this in order to benefit many beings, in order to
bring happiness to many beings out of sympathy for the world and for the
sake of the welfare, benefit, and happiness of many beings, including
gods and humans.  Your intention, in questioning the Tathagata, the
Buddha, about this subject is good.  It is good.  Therefore, Gunakara,
listen well, and I will describe to you how Bodhisattvas are wise with
respect to the character of phenomena.  Gunakara, there are three
characteristics of phenomena.  What are these three?  They are the
imputational character, the other-dependent character, and the
thoroughly established character.”  
    Okay? So, what is the
character of phenomena? There are three: the imputational character, the
other-dependent character, and the thoroughly established character. 
The Buddha is, well, I’m saying this, but we could imagine that the
Buddha is teaching us, is trying to demonstrate to us the actual nature
of phenomena by telling us about these three characters.  Now he’s going
to tell us more about them:  What is the imputational character of
phenomena?  It is that which is imputed as a name or symbol in terms of
essences or attributes of phenomena in order to subsequently designate
any convention whatsoever.  What is the imputational character?  It is,
ummm, it is that which is imputed to phenomena in order to be able to
make conventional designations.  It is that which is imputed to
phenomena in order to be able to talk about them.
    An implication
which I draw is that in order to talk about what is happening in our
life, we must impute something to what is happening in order to be able
to talk about it.  And we like to talk about it; we have to talk about
it; we have to talk about our life, and even Buddha has to talk about
our life; it’s part of our situation.  It’s standard equipment on our
life that we want to and need to talk about what is happening.  But in
order to talk about what is happening, we must impute something to what
is happening.  If we just sit upright with what's happening, without
imputing anything to it, we cannot talk about it.    Impute means, “to
put on top of, to superimpose.’  Also I’ve heard the root of impute
means ‘to say.’  It’s like we need to say something about what’s
happening in order to be able to talk about what’s happening.  This is
the imputational nature of phenomena.  We have to impute something to
what’s going on, we have to put something on top of what’s going on in
order to talk about it.  That’s the first character of phenomena the
Buddha mentions.  
    Now he also says what it is that we impute to
what’s happening.  What is it that we impute?  We impute essences and
attributes.  And who do we do that?  We do it with words and symbols. 
And words or conceptual consciousness.  We use our wonderful conceptual
consciousness and words to impute imaginary things to what’s happening. 
And what is the imaginary thing we impute to what’s happening?  An
essence.  An entity.  An own-being.  These are different vocabularies of
what we project to what’s happening.  What’s happening actually is free
of essences, own-beings, entities, and selfs.  But, in order to talk
about what’s happening, we have to superimpose upon what’s happening, or
upon how things are happening; we have to superimpose this fantasy of a
self, of an essence, on what’s happening.  And also, we bolster that
projection by imputing attributes of the things (Side B)…we project
essences onto.
    This imputational character is also sometimes
called “mere fantasy” or, the Sanskrit original is parikalpita, which I
could translate as ‘complete unsurpassed perfect fantasy.’  But that’s
part of the story, that’s one of the main characters, that’s the top
three.  The next one, the other-dependent character, what’s that?  What
is the other-dependent character of phenomena?  It is simply the
dependent co-origination of phenomena, simply the dependent
co-origination.  And the simple way of putting it, the traditional way
of putting it is: because this exists, that exists; because this arises,
that arises; because this is produced, that is produced.  This is the
principle of dependent co-arising.
    In other words, what we are,
what we experience, everything of our life, what is actually happening
in our life is something that depends on something other than itself. 
Everything is powered by others.   I am powered by others.  You are
powered by others. Your life is other-dependent--your actual life, not
your imaginary life.  Your imaginary life, you’re in charge (laughter),
and people who want to make money sell control: “ Come to this motel and
you will be in control of your life.”  “Get control of your life”--
this is what people pay for.  It’s hard to get them to pay for
contemplating that others are in control, that you are dependent on
others moment by moment, that you are not self-produced, you are
other-produced.  
    So another traditional story is the twelve-fold
chain of causation.  This process of other-dependence ranges from due
to conditions of ignorance, karmic formations and so on, up to old age,
sickness, and death.   That twelve-fold chain of causation, that’s the
story of dependent co-arising.  But moment-by-moment, also, every
experience, every actual arising is other-powered.  And meditation on
this is the basic meditation, is the fundamental meditation, is the
ongoing meditation of wisdom practice.  To keep our eye on dependent
co-arising, which means to pay attention to impermanent phenomena,
because things that depend on others, like me, are impermanent.  
  
 So, all these many meditations, we want to study how the imputational
character works cause that’s part of understanding, that’s part of
wisdom. But eve n though we’re going to study that, hopefully, we’re
based in the study of the other-dependent; we’re fundamentally always
paying attention to depict the way things happen. And how the way they
happen is they happen dependent on others and this makes us understand
that all compounded things like me and you and everybody we care about
are impermanent, unreliable, and other-dependent.  
    Was that
hard?  (murmurs).  Yeah, the first one’s harder; the first one’s
harder.  And then, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh (laughter).  What. . is . .the . .
thoroughly. . established . . character of phenomena?  What . .  is the
way . . phenomena really are?  What’s the way they are thoroughly
established?  Well, the way they’re thoroughly established is, well,
it’s the way they really are.  It’s the suchness of phenomena.  The
thoroughly established character is the suchness-- is the way they
really are-- it’s the ultimate truth, etcetera. And it doesn’t say it
right here, but I’ll tell you, that what the thoroughly established
character is, it is the fact, the fact, that our ideas or imputations
about the way things are, are not actually touching the way things are. 
That actually, things are free of our ideas; that the way things
actually are is, that our ideas, our imputations, in terms of essences
and attributes so that we can talk about what’s happening, that things
are actually free of that; there’s an absence of that.  Things are free.
 
    Not only are things not what we think they are, but they’re
free of what we think they are.  And the absence of what we think in
what’s happening, that absence is the way things actually are. And if we
mediate on that absence of our imputations, of our superimpositions of
what’s happening, if we meditate on that, all affliction is alleviated
and we realize through this, the various stages of becoming a very
effective peacemaker and Buddha in this world.  
    The
other-dependent character of phenomena is . .ummmm .  . their
impermanence.  Impermanent phenomena demonstrate the other-dependent
character.  So someone asked yesterday how to practically bring these
teachings into our life.  The first step is to meditate on
impermanence.  Because I am dependent on others, I am impermanent.  I
can’t hold myself into permanence.  I can’t control myself because I am
other-dependent.  I am unreliable, unstable, and impermanent. 
Meditating on my impermanence is the beginning of meditating on Buddha’s
wisdom in this teaching here.  Meditating on how I arise
moment-by-moment by the power of others, learning to see how I arise in
dependence on others, learning to see how what I am is other-powered, is
meditation on the central character of phenomena, the other-dependent
character.   [long silence]  
    But it’s hard to meditate on
impermanence because we haven’t been looking at it for a long time.  We
have deep habits to ignore impermanence and the representative of our
deep habits in this presentation is the imputational character. The
imputational character is not impermanent; we are actually impermanent,
and yet, the way things are is that there’s a permanent character, too,
in our life, that projects and gets confused and gets put on top of our
dear little impermanent life.  
    So I’ve got this actual life,
which is, you know, this moment-by-moment creation depending on the
entire universe, we arise.  And depending on the entire universe, sorry,
we cease.  And then again, we arise, or I arise, or it arises.  And
again, because it’s other-powered, I can’t stop it, it ceases.  So, I
arise and I cease, and so do you.   You are impermanent, really, and so
am I.  However, we also have this other factor, which is this process of
imputation.  Now the process of imputation is impermanent.  Imputing is
impermanent, because people like me impute things to lives like I
have.  So I, impermanent me, projects an essence, or a permanence, onto
what is impermanent.   My projection is impermanent because it’s just an
action of me, but what I’m projecting is permanence.
    So it’s
hard for me to see impermanence because I project essences onto my dear
life.  And when you project essences and confuse this impermanent
happening, this impermanent dependent co-arising, when you confuse that
with this projection of essences, after a while you think what you think
is happening is happening rather than what’s happening is happening. 
You can’t see what’s happening because you hold to what’s happening as
what you think is happening.  So it’s hard to learn how to actually look
at impermanence because (he laughs), you know, you think, “Oh, I know
what impermanence is.”  But actually...do you, actually?  Look more
carefully you might find that what you think impermanence is, is
actually not impermanence but what you think it is.  
    Actual
impermanence is not what you think it is.  It’s something other than
your idea of impermanence.  It’s not, as a matter of fact, what you
think impermanence is.  And impermanent phenomena are not what you think
they are.  People are not what you think they are.  You are not what
you think you are.  You’re something else.  What you are is
inconceivably beautiful. And that beauty lives in the absence of all
your ideas about it.  And when you confuse this beautiful way you are
with your ideas, you don’t see the beauty, you just see your idea of the
beauty, which is not the beauty.  This beauty is sitting here in the
absence of your ideas.  And the impermanence, which is part and parcel
of beauty, beauty is impermanent, out of control, other-dependent.  Not
self-dependent, other-dependent.  And the beauty of you and the beauty
of me is this other-dependent character.  
    So how are we going to
meditate on impermanence? If we can’t see it because when we look at
impermanence, really what we’re looking at is our idea of impermanence? 
(silence…. then mumble from audience.)  Non-discursively?  That’s a
good try.   One of the things I’ve heard from certain wonderful people
who are disciples of Buddha is the expression, “Everything changes.” 
That’s not actually the way the Buddha put it.  The way the Buddha put
it is, “Everything that arises is impermanent.”  But not everything
arises. There are things that don’t arise that are permanent.  And one
of the things that don’t arise, that are permanent, is the status of
being a self.  It doesn’t actually happen.  Essences don’t arise--by
definition, they can’t.  And they don’t cease.  They’re permanent.  And
the fact that what’s happening is free of our ideas about it, that
doesn’t happen, either, and it’s permanent.  The way things actually
are, which is free of our ideas, or, the way things are, which is
actually the absence of our ideas about them, that’s permanent.  But
that doesn’t arise.  Anything that arises, ceases.  
    All things
that are put together, dependent on other things, all of those are
impermanent.  When the conditions come together, they arise.  When the
conditions change, they cease.  Those things are impermanent, but the
self of those things doesn’t arise, it doesn’t happen, there’s no such
thing, even though we think there is.  And we superimpose this self on
them so we can talk about them.  We put a self on what’s happening so we
can talk about beauty.  But actually, it never takes hold.  We can only
be confused.  In fact the way things are is always free of our ideas. 
But, if we confuse the two, we feel unfree and afflicted.  
    How
can we meditate on impermanence?  Well, we’re going to start by
meditating on our idea of impermanence.  How can we meditate on
other-dependence? We’re gong to meditate on our other-dependence by
confusing actual other-dependence with our idea of other-dependence. 
Cause that’s what we do.  We’re going to start that way, and it’s going
to be hard.  Because when we do this, we’re going through a major
psychic transformation of switching from ignoring what’s happening to
starting to pay attention to what’s happening, and to start to pay
attention to how we obscure what’ s happening, and how our mind obscures
and how we confuse ourselves and distract ourselves from what’s
happening.  
    When we start to notice how we’re distracting
ourselves from what’s happening, we’re starting to pay attention to and
become closer to what’s happening.  When we start to see how we
superimpose things on what’s happening, we start to get closer to
realize the absence of the superimposition.  When we see the absence of
the superimposition, we begin the process of becoming free.  But it’s
not easy to look at this.  The same person, who I think I heard say,
"everything changes”--- one of the most important and helpful people in
my life, who I now say that wasn’t what the Buddha said-- he also taught
that our practice is just to be ourself.  And just to be ourself could
mean just to be your idea of yourself, but actually I take it to mean
who you actually are, free of your idea of yourself.  To actually be the
impermanent, other-powered person you actually are.  You actually are a
person, and you actually do depend on everybody else; and one thing you
don’t depend on, in this whole universe, and that is yourself.  
  
 But you depend on everything else.  And everything else has power in
your life.  That’s who you really are, that’s who I really am, and our
practice is to be that person. That impermanent, unreliable person.  You
can’t depend on this person, but you can depend on everything but this
person.  Because this person is impermanent, other-dependent person. 
Our practice is to be this unpredictable, unreliable, undependable,
impermanent, other-dependent, inconceivably beautiful person.  Everybody
is the same inconceivably beautiful person.  And, in order to be
ourselves we must understand, I think, that we cannot do it by ourself. 
Because in fact, everybody is helping us be who we are, and we need to
understand that everybody’s helping us be who we are.  
    I need to
understand that all of you are helping me be who I am right now.  Even
though I sometimes think, if you would interview them, they would wish I
wasn’t this way.  They would say, “I wish he wasn’t that way.“  But I
have to understand that when you don’t want me to be the way I am, that
helps me be who I am. Because if I don’t think you’re helping me be who I
am, by, for example, saying, “I wish he wasn’t that way,” or even if
you say you really do want me to be the way I am, I could still say,
“That isn’t really why I am this way.”  No matter what you think of me,
and no matter what you say of me, I’m here by your support.
  
 That’s my speaking about the meditation on the other-dependent
character of phenomena.  Our practice to just be ourselves means our
practice is to understand how everybody supports us to be the way we
are, and that means we’re impermanent.  And we don’t have to worry about
making ourselves the way we are.  We don’t have to worry about
anything, but we do need to open our eyes to see how it is that everyone
constantly supports us being the way we’re happening.  And how everyone
kindly takes us away.  And puts us back again.  And takes us away. 
Never are you not supported by all beings, according to the teaching of
the other-dependent character of yourself.  Of your personhood. Of your
life.  But, who you are may be a person who often doesn’t see that
that’s the case.  Who doesn’t really feel that people want you to be the
way you are, which they would again, maybe say, “Yes, that’s right, we
don’t want you to be who you are,” but that is exactly contributing
their way to who you are.  
    So this is another suggestion about
how to live in the meditation, the central meditation, on dependent
co-arising:  is to look at that, and notice, perhaps, that you do not
agree with that, that you really don’t think some people are
contributing to your existence; in other words, that you disagree with
the teachings of the other-dependent character of phenomena in the case
of you.  Other people may be other-dependent but not you.  By revealing
and disclosing your lack of faith in this teaching of other-dependence,
by noticing how you really don’t think everybody’s supporting you to be
what you are, in revealing and disclosing how you don’t really believe,
or you have some doubt, or a lot of doubt, how you just can’t see it,
and how you believe what you see rather than the teaching, like, “It
doesn’t look like these people are supporting me.  Teachings say they
are, but I don’t see it that way.”   By revealing that you don’t see it
that way, and also by believing that you value the way things appear to
you over the teaching, which contradicts the way things appear to you,
by revealing that, you’re revealing your lack of faith in the practice.
  
 But we’re not telling you to stop not believing the teaching.  We’re
not telling you, don’t have any doubt.  As a matter of fact, we’re
saying, fine.  You’re doubt in the teaching--that’s your other-dependent
phenomena--when confessed, will melt away the root of your doubt, will
melt away the resistance to the teaching that you are other-dependent
phenomena.  And once you become intimate and understand the
other-dependent phenomena, then you can study more clearly how you
impute things to it.  And the more you understand how you impute things
to this thing which actually depends on everything in the universe and
therefore doesn’t have a self, the more you see that actually, that’s
just a fantasy.  And really, you are living in the absence of that
fantasy. And when you see the absence of that fantasy, you are looking
at suchness.  And you start to transform; your body actually starts to
change and become a Buddha body.   Yeah, it’s getting late.  Sorry to
keep you so long, and  . uh . . so that’s that.  (laughter)  
  
 Last week, I was at the coffee/tea, and I walked up to some people and
they said, “We were talking about how you don’t sing anymore at your
lectures.“  And I explained to them that, you know, that certain people
express pain (laughter) about me singing.  So I’ve been taking kind of a
sabbatical from singing because I don’t want to . . . because, you
know, I’m just a dependently co-arisen person, and when people say they
don’t want me to sing, they make me into a non-singer sometimes.  But
then some other people say, “Go ahead and sing, so…
“Go ahead and sing.”  “Don’t listen to ‘em, Reb.” (Laughter.)  
  
 I disagree; I just did listen to them.  So I listen, because my life
depends on listening to you, and yet, somehow, listening to you, I
become a singer (laughter).  But I have so many songs; I don’t know
which one to give.  Perhaps, although they’re all excellent, perhaps
this one’s good.  One of the criticisms of my songs is that they’re old
songs. People want new songs.  A lot of my songs are from the 30’s, or
40’s, and 50’s.  They want newer songs, but this is kind of a 50’s song,
I guess.

(Sings in a deep drawl like Elvis:)
Welllllllll, since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell.
It’s down at the end of lonely street at Heartbreak Hotel
You make me so lonely baby, I get so lonely,
I get so lonely, I could die.
And although it’s always crowded,
You can still find some room
Where the broken hearted lover do cry away their gloom
Youuuu maaake me so lonely baby, you make me so lonely baby,
You make me so lonely, I could die.
Weeeeeellll, (laughter) the bellhop tears keep flowin’, and the desk clerk’s dressed in black,
Well they been so long on lonely street, they ain't ever gonna get back
You make me son lonely baby, you get so lonely, I get so lonely, I could die.  
Hey!
Now if your baby leaves you, and you got a tale to tell,
Just take a walk down lonely street to Heartbreak Hotel.
(Laughter, clapping.  Whistles.)