As I mentioned a number of times, the bodhisattva's realization is emptiness. The realization of a greatly compassionate being is emptiness. And tonight I would like to also say that the bodhisattva's realization is the middle way. The middle way is emptiness. And it is the teachings about emptiness. The bodhisattva's When they have realization, they realize emptiness and the teachings on emptiness.

[01:06]

In other words, how to teach emptiness. So we have been chanting these two sutras about the middle way. And in the first one, the Buddha talked about avoiding various two extreme kinds of distraction. And then the Buddha said, at least I've heard he said it, that avoiding these extremes, the Tathagata, the Buddha, has realized the middle path. The Buddha has realized the middle path. The Buddha has realized emptiness. And also, the way to teach emptiness This thing he's realized, this middle path, this emptiness, gives vision, gives knowledge, leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment, to nibbana.

[02:17]

It says, leads to... Emptiness doesn't exactly... I guess you could say emptiness leads to insight, leads to liberation. But there's a short lead... You know, it's like realizing emptiness isn't like then someday it leads down a long road after that to realization. You get liberation when you realize emptiness, you're all set in terms of liberation, nirvana and so on. So leads to is something not pretty short. And so he says, what is the middle path? And he said, it's simply the eightfold path. Again, he says, this middle path realized by the tathagata gives vision and gives knowledge, leads to calm insight, enlightenment and nibbana, leads to enlightenment and life beyond suffering.

[03:17]

The middle way. And the same could be said of emptiness. So there's emptiness and then there's teachings about emptiness. Emptiness is the ultimate truth and teachings about emptiness are conventional designations that are offered to people. And the same with the middle way. The middle way is to avoid extreme views of existence. And, of course, extreme views, it's to avoid extreme views of existence, of self, and all things. Now, of course, it's to avoid extreme views of self and extreme views of existence.

[04:29]

But I would like to say that it is also to avoid, it is to avoid It is to avoid grasping these views. You don't have to avoid them. If you're walking down the street and there's these views around, you don't have to avoid them. You avoid grasping these extreme views of existence, of self and things. That's the middle way. And avoiding grasping extreme views of self and things, avoiding that is also realizing emptiness. But it's not just avoiding the extremes. It's avoiding all views of existence. Now, it turns out that in many ways almost all the views of existence are pretty extreme. But anyway, it's avoiding all the views, not grasping views of self. Emptiness, as Nagarjuna said, is the renunciation of all views.

[05:33]

It's the relinquishment of all views, that's emptiness. But that's the middle way too. So, not grasping these extreme views of existence of self and things, enters into and realizes the emptiness of the self and things. To understand emptiness of self is to understand the middle way of the self. When you understand the emptiness of the person, you understand the central way the person is, the way the person always is. The person's always in the central position, central reality, which is that the person is empty. So Buddhism teaches the emptiness of the person, but that emptiness in Buddhism is self-emptiness. It means that the person or the thing lacks its own inherent existence.

[06:43]

It doesn't mean it has no existence at all. The mahayana is a deep understanding of emptiness. The bodhisattva way is a deep understanding of emptiness, which I feel also means that the mahayana is a deep understanding of the middle way. And the ultimate school of Buddhist philosophy in India, the ultimate position in Mahayana Buddhist philosophy is the middle way school, the school about deep understanding of emptiness dash middle way. Okay? Are you absorbing all this nicely? I feel that there are two schools of emptiness.

[07:44]

Two emptiness schools. One is this Indian school, this Madhyamaka school, this middle way school of Mahayana. Philosophy and practice. Not just philosophy. It is philosophy which is taken into deep meditations. There are two schools of, you know, two emptiness schools. One is the Majamaka in India, which spread to Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, and America, trying to spread to America. It's not having an easy time, but it's trying to get foothold here. Even certain people who live really near me hate that word emptiness. Don't say emptiness, say interconnectedness, not emptiness. Yuck! the ultimate, the absolute, the unconditioned, the yuck. But we bodhisattvas need this thing. Sorry. Let us talk about it occasionally.

[08:48]

No, go to Tassajara. They can't stop you there. So the Madhyamaka in India is the emptiness school and par excellence. And in China, the emptiness school is Zen. Sister schools. So they're both also middle way schools. One's called middle way school. The other's called the Zen school. They're both emptiness schools. Zen, as you know, is famous for not being based on scriptures, right? Not based on scriptures. Or it's called a scriptureless school. Right? Now, In parentheses, scripturalist school means, yippee, we can study any scripture we want to. We can be totally fanatical about the Lotus Sutra because we're not based on that.

[09:53]

We don't need that sutra. So we can just be like, Lotus Sutra, Lotus Sutra, Lotus Sutra. Like here at Tassajara, they chanted the Lotus Sutra for New Year's. Can you imagine? That was their New Year's celebration, to read the Lotus Sutra here. For eight hours, people were reading the Lotus Sutra, drooling in the text. Why? Why can we do that? Because we're not the Lotus School, Lotus Sutra School. We aren't based on the Lotus Sutra. So we can chant the Heart Sutra every morning. We can do that, and our children can hear us do it and learn, because we're not based on that sutra. But, you know, they say that the Madhyamaka school in India is based on the Prajnaparamita Sutras, right? But they're based on a sutra which says there are no sutras. There isn't anything. Forget it. Get a life. So the Madhyamaka school in India based on the Prajnaparamita Sutra is also a scripturalist school.

[10:59]

It's not based on anything. Poor baby. Some people say also that, they don't say that the Madhyamaka is irrational or non-rational. They don't say it's irrational or non-rational. They sometimes accuse it of being nihilistic, but they don't accuse it of being non-rational or non-irrational. It is rational and analytical. But they often call Zen non-rational. But Zen is not non-rational. It is rational. It uses reason. The reason it uses, you know, is Buddhist reason. It's not ordinary reason, but it does use reason. Both schools are non-authoritarian, and both schools are experientially, they're up for experiential verification.

[12:07]

Like case 37, Guishan says to Yangshan, puts the teaching out there, said, how would you test this in experience? And those Zen stories I posted on the Dharma board, okay? Yangshan's talking to Guishan. You know, Guishan says something, Yangshan makes him prove it, and he doesn't prove it. Fails. And the other story, you know, the superintendent, Tzu, says that he's got enlightenment, and Pa Yen says, oh yeah, well what did you tell me about it? Prove it. And he tried, he said, I didn't think he'd be able to prove it. And then he really freaked and proved that he hadn't understood. They rationally worked this out, that conversation.

[13:11]

You can learn those stories So, anyway, these two schools are very close in that way. Another nice thing about being a scripturalist school is you can, like I said, because we're scripturalists, you can be devoted to any scripture. You can even be kind of promiscuous about it. And you can also... use movie reviews to teach Dharma. Because we're not based on movie reviews, so we can use them. So now I like, so again I would just remind you that we have been studying Samatha and we're going to keep trying to develop our skills in developing a mind like a wall, developing this turning the light around and shining it back, learning the backward step. We're trying to develop this ability to not grasp anything in our mind.

[14:16]

And in this non-grasping, quiet down and stop jumping around between different objects. Okay? And I introduce that before we get into the teachings on emptiness in the middle wave. before we get into these teachings about bodhisattva realization, because you've got to like, if we wait until the end of the practice period to start, you don't have much of a chance. So you keep working on this shamatha, and now I'm going to start introducing these teachings. So again, as I mentioned before, in these classes, I'm going to be introducing these teachings and introducing these teachings over and over in many ways. You're going to ask questions, we're going to talk about it and get some understanding about how do you study emptiness, how do you study the middle way. And then when the class is over, you think about it. And you continue and then you study.

[15:18]

in study hall, during all your breaks, all day, all day on, all your whole day off, you know. Not in the middle of the night because there's a time to turn the lights off and go to sleep because you have to be awake to do your shamatha the next morning. But basically, you study outside the class, think about this stuff and clarify and bring your questions back and we keep... So first of all, you get an understanding from the classes, from the teachings, from listening and reading. Then you develop some insight. Maybe you could even write some commentaries on some of these teachings to help you develop an intellectual understanding. So you can get some wisdom in these classes. You can get further wisdom by thinking about these things. And then, Then we're going to take this understanding into our Samatha practice, eventually, hopefully, into the context of the one-pointedness of mind. So you have to be doing kind of two things at once. You have to be developing two things simultaneously, developing this concentration and starting to study these teachings on letting go of all views.

[16:31]

Okay, everything okay so far? Okay, now, one little cute thing I'd like to say is that the Buddha realized the middle way. Bodhisattvas are trying to realize the middle way. And Dogen says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. In other words, to study the Buddha way is to study the opposite of the Bodhisattva's realization. we start with the shamatha practice, we start with non-thinking and so on, but our study, when you start studying the Buddha way, you start studying by studying the opposite of the middle way, the opposite of emptiness. You start studying the self. And you can start studying the self of things, or you can start studying the self of

[17:35]

a person. And usually we start with the grossest, which is the self of the person. So we start by studying the gross opposite of emptiness, which is the inherently existing person. We're going to study something which apparently exists, but which we think inherently exists. We're going to study something, we're going to study, try to find the way we think. We're going to try to find some self, some person, and try to find out not only the person, but we're going to try to find out the belief that this is an inherently existing person.

[18:40]

and then we're going to study, and we're going to try to get a steady view of this person associated with the view of really inherently existing. And then, when we can do that, then we're going to work it over and forget about it. So he says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. In other words, to study the Buddha way is to study the opposite of Buddha's realization. And studying the opposite of Buddha's realization is to forget the opposite of Buddha's realization. But now we remember the opposite of Buddha's realization very nicely. We almost never forget it. And sometimes we do, which is just swell, but, you know, mostly we remember the opposite of Buddhist realization.

[19:49]

Mostly we remember anti-Buddhism, anti-Bodhisattva realization, namely an inherently existing person and inherently existing things. We seem to remember that stuff very nicely because we have a not inherently existing, but an innate ability to remember this delusion. We have a brain which can think this up and attribute reality to it and grasp that very nicely. It takes a little bit of social education. You won't be able to do this if you're just born and don't have a mama. But if you have a nice mama who loves you, you develop nicely and come up with this misconception of who you are. which you never forget after that, except if you take a lot of drugs. Or if you practice a lot of Buddhism.

[20:52]

Pardon? It's not a choice. You have no choice. You have to do the Buddhist one. Because you're here, stuck in Buddha land, And hearing the Dharma, you're done for. You have to forget drugs. By the way, they only work temporarily. It's a temporary suppression of your remembering the self. As soon as the drug wears off, you start to remember again. Where did that drug go? I'm suffering again. I, inherent and existing me, suffering. I've got to do something about this. How about a little karma? I know karma. I know the karma. I can do it all by myself because I am an inherently existing poison. So that's that. And so the next phase of our study will be to try to calmly, to continue to calmly meditate, to quietly and calmly watch what's happening.

[22:04]

to feel what's happening, to watch those concepts of pain and pleasure arise and not grasp them. And in that not grasping, to settle down and clear up. And then, in that context, we're going to start looking for this inherently existing self, which is the thing we're going to eventually forget about. maybe quite soon forget about. But we've got to find it before we can forget about it. Because if we don't find it, we only forget it because we can't find it. And then as soon as we stop looking, it comes back in and takes over again. So, we've got to find it. And that way, this study in the self is an example of how soto-zen is a rational realization study, a rational investigation of what's going on.

[23:10]

Okay, so that's kind of an overview of where we're going to go next. All right, any questions or comments? Sounds sickening, yes? Not really, no. It's just that when you realize emptiness, that's a cessation of suffering. What? No, he was. You realize, the Buddhist realization was he realized no self, right? He realized anatta or anatma vata or whatever. He realized no self, that's emptiness. Realizing that, he realizes cessation of suffering. But emptiness isn't the cessation of suffering. The cessation of suffering is empty. And also the arising of suffering is empty too. All the phenomena are empty.

[24:14]

But if you realize emptiness, you get to not have the suffering in that realization. Because there isn't any suffering in emptiness. There's also no pleasure. But there is a big relief. It's called beyond suffering, nirvana. Okay? So, realization of emptiness is the cessation. But emptiness isn't the cessation. Okay? Emptiness is not a thing like cessation or arising. Emptiness is the nature of arising and cessation. Emptiness is the nature of suffering. Emptiness is the nature of arising of suffering and the ceasing of suffering. There really is no such thing as the ceasing of suffering or the arising of suffering, no inherently existing thing. This is very subtle, but anyway, you asked for it. You're welcome. Any other comments this evening, Paul?

[25:17]

Is there evidence of emptiness? There is evidence of emptiness. There's evidence of things which are empty, and the evidence of things that are empty are, you know, the conditions which must be satisfied, and so on. So, all things that dependently co-arise, there's evidence for. And there's no evidence for anything that doesn't dependently co-arise, because if it doesn't dependently co-arise, you can't find the things it depends on for evidence of it. So, for things, for phenomena... that dependently co-arise and that seem to, you know, seem to, I don't know, that might seem to inherently exist, there's evidence for these things and evidence for them is their dependently co-arising, which is exactly why they're empty. When you, when you can't find a self, that's evidence of emptiness.

[26:22]

When you look, when you can find the self, you know, when you actually can find that you think you've got an inherently existing self. There's evidence for that. You know, you really feel that way. Plus you're suffering. When you can't find that, that's evidence of emptiness. The proof of emptiness, however, is you have to like, it's like that story, you know. The superintendent, Si, he thought he had evidence for emptiness. He thought he couldn't find the self. in that story, you know. And also in the other one, Yangshan thought he had found it, he thought he had proof. I mean, he thought he had evidence. But his teacher didn't think he could prove it. And he didn't prove it in that case. Okay. And in the other story, case 32, the main case, in which that story of Yangshan and Guishan is commentary, that monk did

[27:25]

have some evidence for realizing emptiness, or did have some evidence of emptiness. Namely, he couldn't see anything, couldn't find anything. That's his evidence for emptiness. However, he got stuck in that stage. He turned that into a view of emptiness. So, when you realize emptiness, you don't want you don't want to turn that into a view. So the view, again as Nagarjuna and the fourth ancestors say, the emptiness is a relinquishment of views. Like the view of Anne, you relinquish it. You don't get to see Anne anymore. The view of Paul, you relinquish it. You give up all these views of everything. Okay? That's emptiness. But to possess that view of relinquishing everything, That's immature emptiness, immature realization of emptiness. So at that point you have to remember that emptiness is form, which prevents you from grasping the view of emptiness, grasping the relinquishment of views.

[28:41]

So there is evidence for emptiness, and then also we need to prove the realization of emptiness. which is the life of the bodhisattva who has realization, the compassionate teaching career of the bodhisattva. Yes? Is what in Dogen's commentary? Yes, that chapter in the Shobo Genzo? Yes, but he's basically writing a classical about the heart suture, right? Yeah. Yeah, he does, that's right.

[29:43]

But form, although emptiness is form, emptiness is not exactly the same as form. It's not 100% the same. It's just very, very close. And you can't have any emptiness without form. Emptiness depends... Emptiness is not like, hey man, I'm emptiness. I'm the emptiness of something. So you never have... It's just that when you have a form, right there immediately you've got emptiness. But when you have emptiness, you also right there have form. Form and emptiness are locked together. but they're not completely the same. They're actually contradictory, very close friends. They're intimate, contradictory, inseparable aspects of the big picture.

[30:50]

Okay? So, we, and also Nagarjuna says, you know, without being familiar with the conventional, with conventionalities like selves, and also if there's a conventionality called the belief that the self inherently exists, that's another one, without familiarity with these conventional things, emptiness should not be taught. So that's why we start by studying the opposite of emptiness, the belief in nonemptiness. And selflessness should not be taught without being ground in selfishness, without being familiar with how selfishness works and how the self works. We shouldn't be studying selflessness. So I'm telling you a little bit about emptiness, but basically I'm saying now the next step is to go back and start looking at form and how we think form inherently exists, and in particular how we think that the form...

[32:01]

feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness to come together to create this self, how we think that inherently exists. We start there. Okay? All right. Let's see, what time is it? Oh, it's not too late. Bernd? Applied? Yes? Yes? I hate those unapplied meditation practices. What? OK, that sounds nice. OK, you're practicing tranquility. Yes. Yes.

[33:09]

Yes. This is not too good a taping. I'm just saying yes, yes, yes. You don't know what he's saying. But it's fine. Don't worry. So this concept arises, and the concept that's arising happens to be a self that's separate, on its own, inherently existing. So that's arisen. Okay, good. What now? Well, I was kind of thinking to get into that more tomorrow, but I'll say tonight. that the first thing to do is, if you are so lucky as to be able to see this, you're really getting... If one were able to see this notion, this idea of a self that exists all by itself, on its own, by its own inherent existence, If one were able to do that, then the first thing to do would be try, just be real quiet now, and see if you can keep seeing it for a while, rather than just like, whoa, wow, whoa, did you see that one go by?

[34:29]

Oh, that was painful. How embarrassing. But if you can, so I'll get into that tomorrow about what to do. If you're lucky enough to spot one, how to work with that, okay? That's what I talk about tomorrow. If you are so lucky as to be able to spot the thing we're supposed to be looking for in our insight work now, then how do we proceed? That's a very important question. That's what we'll start with tomorrow. But I guess I'll just say if you happen to see it tonight, just continue to be quiet and maybe it won't get scared away. And you can spend the whole night with it. And by tomorrow, your hair will be sunshine bright. That's a nice, that's a 50s ad. Use new white rain shampoo tonight and tomorrow your hair will be sunshine bright.

[35:32]

White rain, white rain. Remember, Ann? Remember Rosie? Elka doesn't because they didn't have white rain in Bulgaria. Anybody else old enough to know that song? You are? Good girl. Who? You don't remember it, but you're old enough. Okay. Are you sure you're old enough? Anyway. Anything else for tonight? Jonathan? Yes. The extinction of the entire mass of suffering. Yes.

[36:33]

You're asking me to talk about nirvana, what nirvana is like, what the cessation of suffering is? You know, just like there's... Just like there's emptiness, okay, the middle way, and anti-emptiness, like inherently existing things, Just like there's like an obscured version of what's going on here and an unobscured version, just like form and emptiness are real close, suffering and the end of suffering are also really close. This world has, you know, two possibilities, form and emptiness, basically, or nirvana and samsara. But they're very, very close. When you realize samsara, you're a regular guy.

[37:46]

You're a regular suffering guy in the street, carrying around in a sense that he's inherently existing and doesn't even know it, but is scared because he's doing that. So you've got suffering. You've got a massive ill going for you. And even if you practice Buddhism and you're carrying your ego around, you're still suffering. Realizing freedom from suffering, all right, it's not like the misery is like some faraway place. It's just that life has these two ways of being. They're very close. There's not a big distance between them. So when you realize suffering, usually you just hear about nirvana. And when you realize nirvana... you hear about suffering. But, in fact, you do realize nirvana and you are free of suffering, but suffering is not some faraway place. It's just that you're into the nirvana side of things now.

[38:50]

So you actually are free of suffering. You're beyond suffering. You're actually beyond it. But it's not like it got annihilated, because that's exactly what you got free from, is grasping the extreme view that suffering gets annihilated or that suffering lasts. You're not into that anymore. People who are into suffering lasting or suffering getting annihilated are in samsara. Those are suffering people. People who don't grasp that suffering lasts or that suffering gets smashed to smithereens, people don't think that way, are people who are in the middle way. So when you're in the middle way, you don't think about suffering being completely eliminated. Annihilated. So in fact, realizing nirvana, suffering has not been annihilated. It's just you're free of it for the moment. And bodhisattvas do not abide in nirvana.

[39:52]

They realize it, but they don't abide there. Okay? You realize freedom, but you don't camp there. Okay? Okay? Yeah? Jane? When you say free of suffering, would it be the same thing to say free to suffer and free not to suffer, or free to have suffering and free not to suffer? Yep. You're free to suffer and free not to suffer. You're also free of pleasure. Well, it's actually basically nirvana's freedom. And some people emphasize that it's freedom from suffering, but it's also freedom from pleasure. It's freedom from birth. It's freedom from death. It's freedom from being a grandfather. It's freedom from being a grandmother. It's freedom from... It's plain old out-and-out freedom. So you're free. So since you're free of suffering and you're free of all those Buddhist scriptures, you can be totally devoted to the realm of suffering and you can plunge back in there and just totally be in suffering and be free.

[41:02]

The Buddha completely lives on suffering beings. But Buddhists also can be free of suffering and not be around suffering at all, be totally not there. You're free to be involved or not. Buddhas who aren't involved aren't really cooking full scale. So you've got to come into the world sometimes to be a full scale Buddha. But they don't have to. Bodhisattvas sometimes are not involved. So you're free to be out or in. So there's a lot of possibilities there. OK? Yes? Is it helpful to what? Well, is it helpful to beings if you're like in nirvana for the moment?

[42:11]

I don't know how much helpful it is at that time. It's helpful that you realize nirvana. Realizing nirvana is helpful. But the fact that you're enjoying it may or may not be helpful. But maybe you could say, well, like Shakyamuni Buddha, after he realized nirvana, he had to cook in it for a little while to sort of clear up a few things. I guess if you're doing special projects and stuff in nirvana that will later help you, then it would help beings, I guess. But it's not too good to stay in nirvana too long, I don't think, as far as the other people are concerned. Well, that's sort of it.

[43:18]

You could, theoretically, according to that statement, you could check out and not come back. That would be possible. That's an option. According to this teaching, that's the way it was sometimes understood, that you could go into emptiness, go into nirvana, and just not come back anymore. You'd maybe live out this life, but after the karma of this body is complete, you would actually not come back anymore. That's a possibility. You would personally... Your situation would be relieved of suffering and you'd clear your karma and that would be the end of this particular lineage of suffering. But that's not the Buddha's story, except it looks like Shakyamuni Buddha maybe took that option, but some people think that that's not really what happened.

[44:19]

But he had come back many lives before, supposedly, and not taking that option before. Pardon? I think that that if you want to study reincarnation, that could be part of the study of this practice period, because in that twelvefold link of causation in the second sutra, that can be understood as three lives. So if you want to try to do some study of those teachings, how that all works, you can do that. I don't know if ... it might be a bit of a distraction. I don't know if I'd recommend it, actually, but in the long term of your study of Buddhism, you might eventually want to study about that kind of thing. At this point, it's not necessary, I don't think, it doesn't seem to be necessary to study all those teachings about reincarnation, try to understand reincarnation.

[45:29]

If you become enlightened, you will understand reincarnation. But if you start studying reincarnation, it may be a diversion from from the work that I'm thinking of concentrating on this practice period. I think if you just don't reject, if you don't reject the possibility of rebirth, then I think that's enough for now. Okay? Because rejecting rebirth, I think, interferes with What? What would that interfere with? What? Bodhisattva what? Bodhisattva vow? It would contradict the middle way because middle way is relinquishing all views. If you reject the doctrine or the possibility of rebirth, you're holding on to a view.

[46:36]

So, And it also fights some bodhisattva vows too about, you know, this life and blah, blah, blah, blah, for countless lives I vow to. What you need to do is you need to become enlightened. You need to become omniscient. And then when you're omniscient, you'll know about all this rebirth stuff. It'll just be kind of like a little kind of a consolation thing that comes along with the omniscience. Which is handy sometimes. If you're out there in full-scale Buddha job land, you may need to be able to tell people you know that kind of stuff. That might be handy. But for now, let's get complete, perfect enlightenment and then worry about rebirth later. Not to mention reincarnation. Does that seem reasonable for now? Is the practice of samatha and vipassana a distillation of the eightfold path or part of the eightfold path?

[47:54]

It's part of the eightfold path. Right view and right intention are kind of like vipassana. And right effort is very much like vipassana, I mean, samatha, almost identical to samatha. And right mindfulness and right concentration are basically two, well, they're also samatha. So those last three are samatha, quite literally. and right view and right intention are vipassana. And the other ones are part of the necessary circumstances under which you practice Samatha and Vipassana. So, like I mentioned, you know, there's these preliminary requirements that you're supposed to have to practice Samatha. Did I mention that to you a few times? Actually, I probably should post them, but basically what I said to you was, I think Tassajara nicely kind of satisfies the need, those prerequisites.

[49:05]

First one is like, it shouldn't be too hard to get good meals. That's the first one. Like, you shouldn't have to, like, go real far away to get your food. Like, they didn't say, you should have it brought to you by expert servers and delivered to you in a ceremonial and mindful way. I mean, we're far, you know, we've gone way, way, we're like, you know, in like, Not just basic requirements. We're like in pure land here. And some people, I understand, we're having a little bit more brown rice than before. And some people prefer white rice. So not only do they get food, but they get food which helps them find their self-cleaning. And the others of us who like brown rice are getting food which is healing us of jardia. Brown rice is the way, little brown rice guys goes in there and they say, okay, Jardia, time for you guys to like, you know, go to another monastery.

[50:13]

You know, you can be like regular students there. But let's just kind of like move out of this particular little nook and cranny here in this intestine, okay, because I'm going to scrub here. Whereas white rice, if there's a jardia guy in there, the white rice comes in there and kind of cements them into the testes. Takes this gooey stuff and sort of squashes it around the jardia and keeps it stuck in there. So that's why we have more brown rice. It's to cure you of all your diseases. So Zen is not based on any sutra, except there's one sutra it's based on, and that's the macrobiotic sutra. George Osawa. So anyway, those three, you know, right action, right livelihood, right speech, those, is that it?

[51:18]

Just three? Three, three, two, yeah. Those three are basically living at Tassajara. Tassajara, you don't do anything that would hurt people. You know, you practice the precepts. Your livelihood is, you know, is right. And you never say, you never slander people. You never gossip. You never have harsh speech. You never lie. Right? That's Tassajara, isn't it? Well, it's supposed to be, right? I mean, ideally, the way Tassajara is supposed to be is the is the situation in which you practice Samatha. So, in fact, the Eightfold Path is Samatha Vipassana. The Eightfold Path at Tassajara. Now, to try to practice the Eightfold Path out in the city, you might have trouble setting things up so that those other three are taken care of. Like, if you go someplace where everybody's slandering and gossiping and you join, then the Eightfold Path will break down.

[52:23]

You won't be able to practice Samatha. But if you're in an environment, community like this, let's have a sangha like this, then you have those three taken care of if you join in the principle of the sangha. Follow the schedule. Don't steal from the kitchen. Don't insult the kitchen. Say thank you to the kitchen. And not only that, but say thank you to the kitchen staff. Be nice to all fellow practitioners. Never slander them. Never be harsh to them. Always speak kindly. This is our way, right? So these are those three. Right speech, right livelihood and right action. So practicing the Samatha at Tathasahara and then as we get gradually starting to study the teachings of the middle way and emptiness, we're studying right view. So right view, right view, okay? That's the first part of the Eightfold Path. That's the core of the second sutra.

[53:25]

Okay? Now it's just about to be close to time to stop. Is there one more question? Yes? Yes? Okay, I'll post them on the Dharma board. And you might find, you know, maybe some of them, you might think, oh, I don't know, they're required, but... Like, one of them you might think, there should have been a holy person who had once lived here. But some people think there was a holy person who once lived here. Some people think, we had this nice little Zen master here once, really nice, so... If you count him, got that one satisfied. So you look over the list and if there's some big blaring thing missing, we'll try to fix it. But anyway, the food thing, which is the first one, is like... Okay?

[54:32]

So tomorrow I'd like to look at how to find this situation of this self which we think inherently exists and then what to do after finding it. And that part of studying the self we'll work on tomorrow. Okay?

[54:55]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_89.41