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.)