all the Buddhas and all living beings are just one mind, just one heart. And there is nothing outside it. Thus I have heard. All the Buddhas are practicing together with each person, with no exception, with each living being.

[01:05]

Therein, in this one mind, there's no distinction between Buddhas and living beings. But living beings make a distinction. Actually, there is no distinction between Buddhas and sentient beings. Buddhas know this. Sentient beings don't. But they're wrong. about that point. Because they feel separate, because they feel different from Buddhas and different from each other, there is a wound in this one mind. There really isn't, but sentient beings think there is because they feel separate from that which completely supports them and which they completely support.

[02:43]

The mind of a living being creates a wound in the great one mind of love, the Buddha mind. in order to heal this wound and realize the one mind, we must go and sit at the site of the wound. We must sit at the site of the delusion which creates separation between sentient beings and Buddhas, and it hurts there. But if we can become intimate with that wound, the wound heals.

[03:54]

And you see, it can heal actually because it never really happened. Not really. We just think so. But we have fairly powerful thinking equipment, so that counts. And the main way it counts is in terms of pain and cruelty. But it is possible, according I've heard, it is possible to heal this wound and to restore the harmony and peace of this one mind. So this week, and not just this week, but for the last two thousand years, disciples of the Buddha have gathered together to study the middle way. And we've been studying two basic types of presentation of the middle way.

[05:07]

One is the middle way of Getting to our seat, the middle way of finding a way to sit at the site of this wound. The middle way of practically taking our seat in the world of duality. Finding and taking our seat in the world of the wound. And if we can sit there, then we can study the next presentation of the middle way, which is where we realize the middle way of reality, the ultimate middle way, the truth that there really is no separation between us and between us and the Buddhas. But again, in order to become free of this sense of separation, we have to go and sit at the place where we believe in the separation, and that is fundamentally painful there in that way of seeing.

[06:27]

And the middle way that helps us take our seat in this world is the middle way of avoiding extreme practices, avoiding practices that we are devoted to that drive us away from our seat, that take us away from the place of healing, that distract us from our real work. And these two ways are addiction to sensual pleasure Devotion to addiction to sensual pleasure and devotion to self-mortification. These are two ways we trade in, try to get away from this pain. Rather than go back and heal the wound, which is the source of the pain, we try to escape by these extreme practices.

[07:33]

They don't work. They work to the extent of distracting us, but they never heal the wound. And it just keeps being there. I have a friend who came to see me one time, and he told me the story of his uncle. Now, I didn't plan to tell this story, and telling this story is a major derail in my plan, but I can't stop now, can I? I can't, can I?

[08:35]

It's too late. It came up. I'm not in control here, and neither are you. So his uncle was, he has a father and an uncle. And his father was his uncle's brother. And his father was quite a guy. Very strong and intelligent. Strong morally and physically. Very good father. His uncle was also very intelligent, but actually considerably more intelligent. Very, very smart guy. And this family was a Mennonite family, and they owned, you know, Kansas. Or something like that. Dodge City, I don't know what.

[09:38]

Anyway, they were... They had a very big, important family, and they had at least two sons. And one was really smart, and the other one was almost a genius, and had a lot of gifts, a lot of talents. And one day, in working a tractor on their farm, because they were not only religious people and well-educated, but they were also people of the land. So one day, working in the tractor, he, I don't know what happened, but anyway, he got burned, got a burn on his leg, a really serious burn. And so he, you know, so he tried to, he got medical attention and the wound started to heal. But before it started to heal, before it finished healing, he got active again and started to go back to work and do various things.

[10:42]

But the wound hadn't healed, so after I don't know how long, whether it was a year or two years, it resurfaced. And again, he had to like quit all of his activities and recuperate from the wound, let the burn heal. But again, he didn't let it heal and got active again before it healed. And he went for a while sort of in this half-healed state, and again it resurfaced. And he never actually could get going at anything again. And he just deteriorated. And he had an affair with one of the farmhands, one of the people that worked for them.

[11:51]

And she got pregnant. And he married her. And she's a nice person, I suppose. But he didn't really like marry somebody that he wanted to live with. He just married the person that he had an affair with. And then he had a family to take care of. And it went on like this his whole life, that he never let the wound heal. And he never could do anything And things just went down and down from there. All of us are somewhat incapacitated by this wound. And if we don't take care of it, it's going to be a major problem, as it already has been. So we have to, like, give up the distractions from this basic pain.

[13:02]

It's right under our nose. Some of us are quite aware of it. And sometimes people come and tell me about how aware they are of it, and I say, good. This is good that you know about this, this anxiety at that wound. And the funny thing about this wound is, this wound which is, you know, that we don't think we're loved. And we feel great pain at not feeling loved. And then we do various things to either try to correct that or distract ourselves from it. And everything becomes then just a testimonial to the fact to our belief in not being loved. One of the kinds of addictions of the self-mortification type that I haven't mentioned yet is a modern term called addiction to perfection.

[14:13]

And a woman who has made this term famous almost killed herself by her addiction to perfection, just about killed herself. And she finally realized that she was trying to be perfect as a way to avoid facing her life, her life based on incomplete understanding of pain. Finally she kicked the habit, the addiction to perfection, and came back and faced her problems and got her life back. She came back to the wound. So please come back to the wound. It's in all our hearts. It's right where you think you're separate. It's right where you think the other meets the self in an unsupportive way.

[15:23]

And where you meet the other and you can't quite give your love. When we meet someone and we can't give them our love, it hurts. when someone meets us and we feel they don't give us their love, it hurts. We have to go meet that place. And I'm very encouraged by how well many people are going and meeting that place, finding a way to meet it. And again, we can't just throw ourselves roughly, take ourselves by the scruff of the neck, take ourselves by our robe lapel and shove ourselves into confrontation with this pain. That won't work. We have to lovingly almost seduce ourselves into facing this.

[16:30]

We have to convince ourselves that it really is a good idea. and we have to speak in loving terms, in supportive terms, to get us to, ourselves and others, to face this fundamental problem. And since people are facing it, I say you must be doing something right to allow yourself to face this. Congratulations that you dare to love enough to dare to face this fundamental problem. Once we're up to our heart, up to our neck, up to our eyeballs in love and pain, compassion for this difficult situation, then we can understand Buddhism.

[17:43]

We can understand the truth. And as I mentioned a while ago, Suzuki Roshi said that if you want to understand the truth of Buddhism, you have to forget all about your preconceived ideas. But again, if I say that to you and you have not yet taken your seat at this wound and you're not settled there and loving yourself and others and not practicing patiently and kindly and gently and enthusiastically and joyfully in this difficult situation, then you're not ready to forget about all your preconceived notions. Then you would just be spaced out it would be a waste of time or even worse. But when you're really grounded in compassion at the site of your main problem, then it's time to get ready to let go of all your preconceived ideas.

[18:59]

For example, the preconceived idea that you exist separately from others. You can let go of it then. It's okay. Just like, you know, when I cross my legs and sit up and take good care of my posture, my body says, okay, whatever you say, boss. If you want to let go of me, it's all right. We'll be able to sit here even if nobody's holding on. See, look. It's okay. I don't have to hold on. Because I take good care of my body. So I take good care of my body and I say, is it okay if I let go of you? And body says, okay. But if you don't take care of your body, body says, you better hold on to me. If you don't feel loved, you say, I'm not going to let go of one thing.

[20:04]

So you take good care, then you can let go. Not just good care in general, but good care of everything, but especially the fundamental pain. We don't like the fundamental pain. We love it. Almost love it to death. Yeah, not almost. We love it to death. gently give it our attention and it drops away. Someone asked this morning, John asked this morning, if it's necessary to be involved in analysis in order to realize the ultimate. Is it necessary to enter into analysis in order to realize

[21:08]

the one mind in order to become free of the idea of self and other? Is it necessary to enter into analysis? And I would say Yeah, but sometimes very subtly. And I'll give you a subtle example of the kind of analysis you have to enter into. But more complicated analyses are necessary when the entanglement is more complicated. So I'll start with a simple entanglement. A simple example, a very basic example of how to let go of your preconceived ideas. But again, if you're not taking good care of yourself, please cover your ears. Okay?

[22:13]

Because this, what I've been talking about might be, make you nauseated. because I'm talking about letting go of your preconceived ideas. And your preconceived ideas are your favorites. They're the ones that you never come without. And wherever you arrive, you've got them with you. Okay? Coming into the room, come on, bring my preconceived ideas. It's okay to suck your thumb. That helps. Warm beverages are acceptable. Anyways, soothe yourself. Are you soothing yourself? If you're soothing yourself, then you're ready maybe for this really nauseating teaching. So this is a teaching also from the Buddha. He said, train yourself like this.

[23:15]

In the scene, there will be just the seen. In the heard, there will be just the heard. In the smelled, there will be just the smelled. In the touched, there will be just the touched. In the tasted, there will be just the tasted. And in the cognized, there will be just the cognized. Now, the analysis that's necessary in this case is to the extent that you think at the present time that there's you plus what you hear, or you plus what you think. To the extent that you think you have your own tangibles, that you are separate from what you touch, to the extent that you think you're separate from your thoughts, or that you have thoughts, that there's thoughts plus you, to that extent you have to practice analysis.

[24:25]

In other words, you have to face the fact that you think there's you plus these realms of experience. That's not too much analysis for you, though, is it? Just admit, to whatever extent you think there's your thoughts plus you. That's enough. That's enough analysis for now. And then train yourself at no further analysis, just noticing to whatever extent there's you plus your thoughts, just let there be just the thoughts. Just let there be the thoughts. Just let there be the thoughts. Train yourself until there's just the thought of, there's just the cognized. There's not you and the cognized anymore. This is called training and letting go of your preconceived notions, preconceived notion of yourself and your thoughts. And then the Buddha goes on to say that when for you in the herd there's just the herd and so on, up to in the cognized there's just the cognized, then

[25:42]

you will not be with it. You will not be with the scene. When there's just a scene, then you won't be with it. There'll just be the scene. Like now. I just see you. I'm not with you. All there is is what I see. Except, yeah, it's all there is I see. Part of what I see are these hands. are these glasses. If I take the glasses away, then I don't see my glasses. So, in other words, when, for you, in the scene, you're just a scene, you won't identify with things anymore. You won't identify, you won't be with things. Also, you won't disidentify, you won't be separate from things. then you won't locate yourself in the things or dislocate yourself from the things.

[26:46]

So then there won't be any here or there or in between. And this is the end of suffering. This is also ultimate truth. Ultimate truth, there's no here and there and in between. There's no you and Buddha and in between. There's no you and me and in between. There's no you and your thoughts and in between. This is an exercise in letting go of your preconceived ideas, which is, your preconceived idea is, there is a here and a there and an in-between. There's a self and an other and a space separating. This is a fundamental preconceived idea, which is our fundamental pain. You can train yourself at forgetting that, at letting go of that in this way.

[27:50]

So there you are. Just a little bit of analysis and a lot of training at letting go of one side of the analysis. One thing that's added on to what's going on. But again, this is not appropriate unless you're grounded at the place where this self-other thing is happening and the pain there. And also the practicing of this training should also be done lovingly. Don't be in a rush. Don't beat yourself up if you don't get this together real soon. It may be hard to learn how to forget all about your preconceived ideas. It's hard just to take your seat.

[28:55]

It's hard to stay in your seat and keep, you know, giving yourself intravenous love so you can stay there. But if you stay there and you patiently and lovingly do this practice, you might be able to get to the point where for you When you hear something, there's just the heard. There's not you hearing it anymore. There's just traffic noise. There used to be something else. What was it? Remind me. What was it? So that seems pretty clear to me, what I just said. Was it clear to you? So in the future, in the limitless future, I will bring up more complicated examples.

[30:03]

Because you can think of other ways besides this to feel separate from each other. and we'll look at them and we'll examine them until you lose your ability to wound yourself anymore. So I'm looking forward to continuing to study the middle way with all Buddhas surrounding all living beings. And I have present from Buddha for you. Buddha sent these in the mail to me today to give to you. He's not afraid to, you know, give you a present of his own teaching. So I have both these sutras here, and if you'd like a copy to memorize, They're quite memorable.

[31:10]

They're not that long. If you memorize them, you won't regret it. And Buddha won't forget it. So here they are if you want one. You can come up and get one later. Okay, anything you want to bring up before we say goodnight? Yes, Tataroo. Excuse me. You said if you're not careful, it might be a transcending into an emptiness practice? Is that what you said? It's okay to transcend your suffering. Don't worry about it. It's okay. In fact, that is the point. That's what Buddha wants you to do, is transcend your suffering and enter into an emptiness practice.

[32:14]

I do. When you're grounded in the conventional, then you actually transcend your suffering with the teachings of emptiness. But you have to be careful. That's what I'm saying. You have to be careful that you're grounded. But once you're grounded... then you can receive these teachings. And when you're really grounded, like I say, when you're up to your eyeballs in it and you receive these teachings and practice them and realize them, you do transcend your suffering. Not just yours, but everybody's suffering gets transcended by this practice. And that's actually okay. What's your problem with that? Hmm? I mean, of course it's OK if we want to transcend our suffering. I just meant that using that practice of separating self from . No, no, you don't separate the self.

[33:21]

I'm not telling you to separate the self. I'm saying you already have separated yourself. You already did that. You come with the preconceived idea, we all do, we come with the preconceived idea that we're separate from our experience. I didn't tell you to do that. I'm saying this is the fundamental human problem. We do that already. We've already analyzed ourself apart from the world. That's our preconceived idea that we have to give up. I'm not telling you to do that, I'm telling you to get over it. OK? I mean, is that clear? Yeah, it's on tape too, I think. So anyway, I'm not telling you to separate yourself from your experience. I'm saying we separate ourselves from our experience. We separate ourselves from our experience.

[34:24]

That's what I started with. What's our experience fundamentally? We are one with Buddha. That's our basic experience. That's our basic life. Now this experience is a non-dual experience. Our oneness with Buddha is not a dualistic awareness. We can't know objectively that we're one with Buddha. But we want to know that we're one with Buddha, therefore we objectify Buddha so we can know that we're one with Buddha. But as soon as we objectify Buddha, we're separate from Buddha. So we're suffering. The analysis has already occurred in our evolution. Buddhism is to cure this wound. The separation is already there. I'm saying you understand that part of go sit in the wound, right? And then let go of the idea which is the source of the wound and experience the relief from that suffering which comes from the reunion.

[35:30]

Okay? Is that all right? Anything else tonight? Yes? Something like not making a problem out of anything. Pardon? Not making a problem out of anything that you experience. And if you are making a problem out of it, it's not making a problem out of that. And watching the karma kind of burn out. Was that a question? A comment? So what's the comment? The comment is... Well, that would be, what he called, that would be, that would be like the fruit of practice is that whatever happens, you wouldn't make a problem out of it.

[36:34]

But what I'm saying to start with is to stop running away from the experience that we do make a problem out of everything take good enough care of ourselves so we can face how much problem we do make for ourselves about almost everything that happens face that settle in that lovingly and then look at how we make the problem And we'll see that the source of our problems is these preconceived ideas we hold on to. That is the source. And then just watch that until there's a release. And then there won't be any making more problems. Then it will be like thank you, thank you, thank you land. Does that make sense? It doesn't look like it. The problem depends on holding the preconceived ideas and they keep it going.

[37:47]

Not only they keep it going, but the suffering they cause keeps it going because the suffering which is caused by holding to these ideas of separation Then we think, oh, now I've got to do something about this pain. So then now I, separate from you, am going to do something about it. And that creates a whole world around this basic problem. And it just keeps rolling, rolling, rolling. This is called birth and death. And we're all working together cooperatively to keep it going. We all got the same basic delusion equipment and we're suffering basically the same way and we're like trying to do something about it dualistically and keeping the world going. But the Buddha, and the Buddha lived in that world too, but he found this other way of going back to the source of the problem, seeing it as it happens and therefore realizing its extinction.

[38:51]

and the path to realize extinction is this view which lets go of these preconceived notions. I'm not quite understanding. I see a person who wasn't grounded in doing the basic practice, eating and suffering. Yes. Yeah. Nagarjuna says that to work with emptiness, work with the teaching of emptiness, the ultimate teaching, or the teachings about the ultimate,

[39:58]

To work with the teaching that to let go of all your views, to work with the teaching that it's an illusion that we're separate, to work with that teaching without proper preparation is like grabbing a snake without proper training or grabbing a sword without proper training. These teachings of emptiness are dangerous if you're not prepared properly by the conventional truth of birth and death. Oh, that practice would be okay, probably. But to get into the teaching that there's no here or there in between, you might go around sticking your finger in people's nostrils without their permission, you know, and say, hey, man, there's no here or in between, you know.

[40:59]

I heard it at Zen Center, you know. Even Suzuki Roshi said it, yeah. It's like, you know, your nostril, my nostril, hey. No problem, you know. Your money, my money, you know. What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine. Or did I miss something there? Anyway, certainly what's yours is mine, you know. I know that part. And maybe what's mine is yours, I'll think about that. You might slip a few points there, but anyway. you start to disrespect, and I shouldn't say start, you might respect ethics less than you do now if you heard this teaching. What we need to do is respect ethics more, give more loving attention to ethics, and then we can realize that there's no self in other. And

[42:03]

OK? Is that enough for tonight? OK. May all our intention

[42:23]

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