Well, lately, I've been studying a sutta, excuse me, from the old way of the Buddha. The original or the oldest layer of Buddhist texts. And this is called the Maha-Tanha-Sankhaya Sutta, which translated into English reads, The Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving. So, I find this a very impressive sutta and I want to talk about this today a little bit. The sutta begins with a monk by the name of Sati, who it tells us, the sutta tells

[01:18]

us is the son of a fisherman. And Sati upholds the view that consciousness runs through the round of rebirths. So he says, and this is a quote from the sutta, this same consciousness runs through the round of rebirths, not another, and he innocently says this. And his brother and sister monks become horribly upset by this idea. And they go to him and say, you don't really mean this, do you? How can you be saying such a thing? And he says, yes, yes, this is what the Buddha taught, this is how I understand it. So they gave him a third degree and questioned him up and down and all over, trying to see if he really indeed believed this thing.

[02:19]

And he kept saying, oh yes, oh yes, this is what the Buddha has taught, this is what I have heard. And so their alarm and dismay mounted. And so they went to the Buddha. And they told the Buddha this, and the Buddha said, bring him in. So they brought in Sati to the Buddha, and the Buddha said, you know, is this what you believe? And Sati said, oh yes, oh yes, this is what I have heard you teach. And the Buddha said, well, what is that consciousness? And Sati said to the Buddha, that which speaks and feels, and I'm quoting now from the sutra, that which speaks and feels and experiences here and there the results of good and bad actions. And the Buddha looked him straight in the eye and said, misguided man, haven't I always

[03:27]

taught that consciousness is dependently arisen, that without a condition there is no consciousness? And then the Buddha goes on to teach extensively about how conditions work in our lives and how always consciousness arises in response to conditions. And this is an interesting thing because always, you know, in all of these early suttas, almost every single discourse that the Buddha gives is in response to some incident like this where somebody has a wrong view or makes a mistake or something happens and everyone is dismayed and then the Buddha ends up giving a lengthy discourse on whatever it is that has come up. So it's our mistakes and wrong views that cause the teaching to come up.

[04:28]

Just as consciousness, as the Buddha teaches here, doesn't arise without conditions, wisdom doesn't come up without mistakes. So in the Dharma there is no absolute truth that is taught in response to no condition. There's only teachings that come out of our mistakes and our confusion. Later on in the suttas you can see the conditions being excised and just the teachings being given, but you can always hear the echo or the shadow of these conditions that gave rise to the teachings in the beginning. So we should be cheerful about our mistakes and wrong views, right, because without them there would be no wisdom and no teaching. Confusion is the condition for the arising of wisdom.

[05:35]

Anyway, we have to think a little bit about this view that sati has here. It doesn't sound that bad, does it, after all? And even if it were a wrong view, why is everybody so upset about it? You'd think it's lots of things to be upset about. Why would you get upset about such a view? And maybe it's not really such a big deal anyway. Maybe you had to know sati to know why they all made such a big deal of it. Maybe if sati were somebody else it wouldn't have been such a big thing. It still might have been an incorrect view, but they wouldn't have noticed it particularly. But perhaps there was something about sati that made them notice and get agitated over his views. So let's think about what is sati actually saying?

[06:47]

What does this view of his amount to? He's saying that there's an ongoing consciousness that speaks and feels and that things happen to, and that this consciousness is going on from one moment to the next. In a way, perhaps the part that catches our ear is the part about how this consciousness goes through future rebirths, but in a certain way that's not really the point. It doesn't matter how we feel about the idea of future rebirths. The point is that consciousness goes on coherently, independently, as an independent, existent entity. That's the point. That's the view that sati is expounding. In other words, we are here today, we were here yesterday, and we're going to be here tomorrow. I am me. I was me. And tomorrow I will be me.

[07:49]

That's what sati's view is, which is a very common viewpoint, don't you think so? In fact, probably most of us in this room believe that view. So you have to ask, you know, what's wrong with that? Right? We all believe that. Why is that so bad? Well, the trouble with that view is that it creates trouble. It creates trouble for me and it creates trouble for you and everyone who is around us. Such a view, the Buddha explains, is actually the root of our suffering. All our suffering in this world comes from this kind of view. Holding on to myself as a fixed, continuous identity blinds me.

[09:01]

It's as if I pick up a self and stick it in front of me. Wherever I look, I don't see. I only see this self that I'm sticking right in front of my face. I'm blinded by my very own self. I can't see what's going on. I can't appreciate what's going on because my view is literally blocked by my self-concept. So this is very cute and silly and it's perfectly understandable and tragic. The opposite of this view, the opposite of holding on to a self, is to be aware, just to be present.

[10:04]

Now we think when we're being aware, we think, I'm aware of myself. And we think that when we're present, we are present. But actually, really being present and really being aware are the opposite of holding on to our self. To be present and aware very deeply, even below the level of what we can name and what we can describe to ourselves, just to be aware and present on this level, is to give ourselves to the circumstances of our life without holding back. When we're aware in this way, what we're aware of is just what's happening, not of our self. We're not holding on to our self, we just see things unfolding. And we have the flexibility and the peacefulness to react to them reasonably.

[11:13]

I have always been impressed that the Buddha was a person who had a tremendous amount of faith in the healing power of life itself. He felt that life itself could heal us, that we didn't need anything more. He felt that if only we could completely trust our actual life as it is, and just allow ourselves to be with it, that we could be okay. And that all our personal and societal pain could be relieved. And he felt that holding on to our self, holding on to our notion of our self, whether it's an individual self or a larger societal identity or an ideology,

[12:23]

holding on to something like this is the opposite of trusting our life and just being with it. Holding on to our self is stepping back from our life blindly. And so naturally, trouble happens, suffering happens. And this is why the Buddha made such a big point of this view of sati, this very innocent, common, everyday viewpoint. This is why he felt it was important to show the danger of such a viewpoint. And he said to sati, Consciousness is reckoned upon a particular condition upon which it arises. Consciousness is reckoned upon a particular condition upon which it arises. In other words, our life, my life, your life is constantly being recreated by everything that occurs to us.

[13:37]

By our encounters with friends and enemies, by the weather, by what happened last year, what happened yesterday, what happened just in the last moment, by our decisions and commitments, by our thoughtfulness, by our thoughtlessness. Things are constantly occurring, moment after moment, and we must co-operate with these things. If we co-operate with what's going on, life flows. If we hold up a self in the face of it, life occludes and suffering happens. So life is a constant adjustment, a constant balance, and a constant surprise.

[14:40]

Did you ever stop to think, why is it that people talk? How come we have to yak? I mean, foxes don't talk, and they get along okay, and blue jays and raccoons, they seem to do famously without uttering a word. How come humans have to talk? I think that we have to talk because selves, must talk so they can explain themselves. The nature of a self is that it is ripped out of the fabric of ongoing life, and so a self needs to yell and croon and rhyme and rock and roll

[15:48]

to try to make an effort to get knitted back into the fabric of life. At our worst, we talk ourselves out of a natural connection and happiness into a persistent misery that we become highly committed to, because it sounds so good to us. It's true, I think. It's true. And at our best, we find within our very language a silence that allows us to rest in our life. So this is a special kind of language, poetry and sometimes religious writing

[16:54]

can find this way to the silence within language, not to be confused by language, find a self in language, but rather to put language down in silence and to remind us that holding on to ourselves is an old habit that we have to be patient with, but it is very foolish and not worth pursuing. So this reminds me of a poem. This is an Emily Dickinson poem. Lately I've been reading lots of poems by Emily Dickinson, who was a wonderful American poet, one of the really great American poets. As a 19th century woman, she really wasn't able to find a voice, a public voice, so she

[17:57]

just stayed home and lived very quietly and found a voice. Her poems are very deep, always. Here's one. I saw no way the heavens were stitched I felt the columns close the earth reversed her hemispheres I touched the universe and back it slid and I alone, a speck upon a ball went out upon circumference beyond the dip of bell. I better read that again. I saw no way the heavens were stitched

[19:03]

I felt the columns close the earth reversed her hemispheres I touched the universe and back it slid and I alone, a speck upon a ball went out upon circumference beyond the dip of bell. It's really hard to know what she means, huh? She would get so far into her inner life and you could feel it in the poem, but if somebody said, what exactly does that mean? You'd say, well, I'm not sure. She probably would say the same thing. I'm not sure what I meant. The line, beyond the dip of bell, is strange, isn't it? What does that mean? So maybe, I'm thinking today

[20:10]

that maybe this poem is a poem about putting down the self within language. About how, through this very self when we come into touch with it and let it go we can fill the whole universe and enter into silence. I have the idea that when she says, beyond the dip of bell she's referring to that funny place at the end of the sound of a bell when there's silence but we can't say when it begins and when the sound of the bell ends. Maybe in your Zazen practice once in a while you have been able to appreciate this place

[21:12]

where there's deep, deep silence and you can't tell where it begins and where it ends. Maybe you have heard the silence in the sound of the wind in the trees and the silence in the sound of the birds in the bird song and you can even hear silence in traffic sounds and silence in the sound of the human voice too. Sometimes when I have done meditation practice with children it's hard to tell children to sit still and follow their breath so I don't do it that way. I get a bell and I say, now boys and girls I'm going to strike this bell

[22:14]

and I want you to listen very carefully and when the sound of the bell disappears and silence comes raise your hand so they all listen. Bing! They put their hands up and they're concentrating very hard and they're very still. It's a wonderful practice. Would you like to try it? Let's try it. Bing! It's kind of hard to tell, isn't it?

[23:19]

Let's do it again. What? Bing! Anyway, I think maybe that's what she means by beyond the dip of the bell. I don't know. So I want to read some passages to you

[24:23]

from the Greater Discourse on the Destruction of Craving. The Buddha is speaking to the bhikkhus and he says, Bhikkhus, purified and bright as this view is this view of consciousness as being relative to conditions not independent purified and bright as this view is if you adhere to it cherish it, treasure it and treat it as a possession would you then understand the Dhamma that has been taught as similar to a raft being for the purpose of crossing over not for the purpose of grasping? No, venerable sir, they all say. Bhikkhus, purified and bright as this view is

[25:28]

if you do not adhere to it cherish it, treasure it and treat it as a possession would you then understand the Dhamma that has been taught as similar to a raft being for the purpose of crossing over not for the purpose of grasping? And of course they say, yes, venerable sir. So as I said, the title of the sutra is Discourse on Craving. So this idea of grasping and craving is very important and of course the main thing that we grasp and crave, perhaps in a way the only thing that we really grasp and crave is ourself. So the most important thing that Buddha wants to teach in this sutra is the danger and futility of grasping and craving. In giving up grasping and craving and finding silence and rest

[26:29]

right in the middle of the vast multiplicity of life that is who we are we can let go of suffering and we can actually be of benefit to ourselves and to others. So this is a big point and the Buddha is here telling us that it's important not to substitute another self for ourself. Here he points out that even this wonderful and correct view of cooperation if we grasp it if we define it if we objectify it it becomes an incorrect view. So maybe the reason why everybody was so agitated about Sati is maybe Sati was someone who grasped views and was very insistent on his views

[27:33]

didn't have much flexibility or quiet about his views. So in our practice we need to be clear that we're not objectifying practice objectifying Buddha as another and more virtuous version of ourself. This is what explains, I think religious fundamentalism when people they would never be selfish but when they define themselves as something bigger than just their mere self they can be fierce and they can feel completely justified in their self-centeredness. So it may be very clear when we're being self-centered in a narrow way but we have to be careful that we're not being self-centered in a more sophisticated and tricky way. We need to be aware

[28:35]

when we're masking our self-centeredness behind some so-called principle. When we elevate our self-centeredness to a doctrine or creed when we define our self-centeredness in a lofty way later on in the Sutta the Buddha says this On seeing a form with the eye he does not lust after it if it is pleasing he does not dislike it if it is unpleasing he abides with mindfulness of the body established with an immeasurable mind and he understands, as it actually is the deliverance of mind and deliverance by wisdom wherein those evil unwholesome states

[29:37]

cease without remainder having thus abandoned favoring and opposition whatever feeling he feels whether pleasant or painful or neither pleasant or painful he does not delight in that feeling welcome it or remain holding on to it as he does not do so this kind of grasping delight in feelings ceases in him with the ceasing of this grasping delight comes cessation of clinging with the cessation of clinging cessation of holding on to ongoing life with that the cessation of birth old age and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair all cease. Good deal, right? Happiness occurs, such is the cessation of this whole mass of suffering so letting go of this kind of craving which takes the form of either wanting something or wanting to get rid of something

[30:37]

letting go right there and finding rest right there we find our lasting happiness and we let go of this great mass of suffering in our own lives and all around us so we stop finally holding on and when we find that we are holding on we just rest right there in the middle of our holding on not making more holding on by justifying and pursuing holding on but just stopping right there and acknowledging the holding on and this is the way to fundamentally end suffering and in this passage the Buddha points out the subtlety of holding on holding on happens in our very acts of perception

[31:42]

and description and thought before we even know it so it's not that easy really to let go of holding on that's why we have to sit down on the cushion and make our mind subtle as subtle as our habits but we can change and you know we do change and it's one of the joys of practicing in a center for many many years to see people change and grow and really let go of their suffering in a thorough going way but this change happens slowly and it happens deeply and we might not even

[32:44]

notice it almost feels like it happens on a cellular level we want to be in control of the changes in our life we want to be able to see them and write home about them you know but maybe we can't really see them maybe others see them but maybe we don't have the satisfaction of seeing change in the way that we would like to it's only by thorough day by day practice of awareness that our life slowly by slowly begins to come into balance and there's always a new problem what shall we work on today

[33:45]

and you know as usual I don't have the idea that I'm telling you something that you don't already know I think we all know this very well so how come we resist it so mightily how come we don't have a happy and peaceful world because we all really want to have ourselves you know we want to have ourselves and we want to be free but since it's ourself we need to be free of this is a problem so we go on this way but we do have to

[34:51]

honor and acknowledge the self that arises within us and we have to find rest within it and let it go and in this way and I really feel only in this way can we find some true ease and some true peace in our life now whenever the great Zen master Amatsa was asked what is Buddha he would always say this very mind is Buddha he would repeat this over and over again until they got it and he had one good disciple named Dhamme who really absorbed this deep teaching and Dhamme went away and began practicing and teaching this himself and time went by

[35:55]

and one day another monk came up to Amatsa and said as usual what is Buddha expecting him to say you know this very mind is Buddha but he didn't say that he said not mind not Buddha wow, different story and from then on when he was asked what is Buddha he would always say not mind not Buddha so one student of his went to visit Dhamme and told Dhamme that the master has now changed his tune he doesn't say anymore this very mind is Buddha he says not mind not Buddha and Dhamme said I don't really care what the master says let him prattle on as he will I know for myself this very mind is Buddha so the student went back to Master Ma to tell him to see what was going to happen when he told him this and Master Ma

[36:59]

just smiled and said looks like Dhamme is ripening Dhamme means big plum so later on another monk said to him why for all that time did you say this very mind is Buddha when you were asked what is Buddha why did you say this very mind is Buddha and the master said because I wanted to stop the crying of a baby and the monk said when the crying has stopped what is it then and Master Ma said not mind not Buddha this was a persistent monk

[38:01]

he didn't leave it at that how do you teach a person who does not uphold or grasp either mind or Buddha then what Master Ma said I would tell him nothing the monk said well what about someone who is free from craving or grasping anything at all what would you tell him and Master Ma said I would say I just enjoy the great way of Buddha now another time a monk came up

[39:01]

to the master took a stick these were the days you know took a stick and drew on the ground four lines the top line was a long line and the other three lines were short lines and he said to the master besides saying one line is long and three lines are short what else could you say the master took the stick and drew one line and he said this could be called long or short a moment after moment in our lives

[40:04]

there is only one incomparable moment we actually don't go from place to place we're just here we actually don't undergo change there's just now we could call it long or short we could call it Buddha we could call it this very mind we could call it Tom, Dick or Harry and of course we do call it all those things and other things depending on what's happening right now and we have to be careful and discriminating about what we call it and why we call it that but the point is we're not fooled by what we call it we don't grasp

[41:04]

on what we call it we never forget the silence and the rest and the letting go right in the middle of whatever we call it over and over again we bring up this place of silence and letting go of craving everything everything we do in our practice is about this all peace and happiness comes from an appreciation of this and we're all here together because we know this and because we help each other to remember it and that's a great thing, don't you think? it's a great thing so, thank you very much for your

[42:13]

kind attention this morning it is good to see you all again could be things that have to do with something that was in the lecture this morning but it doesn't necessarily have to be and usually the discussion ranges every which way and I always mention when I lead the discussion that I'm leading the discussion but it doesn't mean that I have all the answers and people usually respond to each other's questions and so feel free to do that as well a couple of things I want to say before we start here it is, first of all I would like to end a little bit early today because I have to be in the East Bay to do a wedding this afternoon so I have to zip over there so I'd like to leave by about 12.30 and end the question and answer at 12.30 instead of quarter to one and also Katie asked me just now and I'm saying now because I'm afraid I might forget at the end that there's another event happening in the room this afternoon

[43:15]

and she would like us to put the chairs away and they go in the closet so when we're finished, when we break up here if somebody would remember about putting the chairs away because I'm liable to forget in my rush for the door so with that let's begin you talked about dependent co-arising and I guess I always have the same question what is the concept? I don't get that good question you can imagine that there's a whole I mean the Buddhist literature is vast and there's a lot of commentarial literature and in the commentarial literature there's many many pages devoted to this question and while I've studied some of it I haven't really studied a lot of it and I keep always thinking about it it's kind of hard to understand but there's many aspects to the answer to that question what is consciousness? so let's see

[44:19]

well there's three so this is a little technical there's three words that are often used to define consciousness one is vijnana another one is citta and another one is manas vijnana and they're all different aspects different ways of looking at the same thing consciousness and they all three mean consciousness and are often translated as consciousness vijnana emphasizes consciousness as that which discriminates so consciousness usually means consciousness of something so consciousness of green instead of blue consciousness of this instead of that so consciousness is that which distinguishes one thing from another the faculty that distinguishes one thing from another is consciousness that's one way of looking at consciousness another way of looking at consciousness is citta

[45:22]

and citta means attitude a good translation for that word is attitude and it means that which accumulates so another way of looking at consciousness is a kind of a kind of a space in which what happens to us accumulates over time so our consciousness develops as things happen to us and as our life changes and a third aspect of consciousness is manas and that means that which knows the faculty of knowing experiencing and being aware of something experience itself is an aspect of consciousness so things happen in a field of awareness and that field of awareness is consciousness and the ability to distinguish one thing from another within that field is also something that consciousness is a faculty of consciousness and consciousness builds up over time awareness builds up over time that's also a function of consciousness so of course the question if you say

[46:26]

what is consciousness like, where is it, how do I find it then of course there are many stories in the tradition about well if you look for consciousness you can never find it because it isn't an objectifiable phenomenon how could consciousness be aware of consciousness I want to know what consciousness is so how could I see myself like a fingertip can't touch itself so this never could happen right I could try all I want but I just can't make this fingertip touch itself it could touch other things so I can be aware of functions of consciousness and I can distinguish different functions of consciousness but I can't experience consciousness itself as an object since I am that so there are many stories I want to find so you have your true self resting in I can't find it is perhaps from the standpoint of the Buddhist path what consciousness is

[47:28]

so is awareness necessary for consciousness to occur or can consciousness occur without awareness well there is the unconscious which is an aspect of consciousness so in the unconscious the accumulation is present but knowing and discrimination is not present so you are asking again yes yes it seems to me that when you talk about unconscious and then there is conscious which seems to me that the consciousness will be able to discriminate it's really easy to look at the unconscious I can always find the unconscious in someone but not necessarily the conscious part of someone anyway I have a question for you you mentioned grasping

[48:29]

craving and I want to ask you what you felt was the distinction between here we have grasping and then there is longing and how I would like I know longing and if that has anything to do with craving or grasping I don't feel like I'm craving I don't feel like I'm grasping but there is a deep sense of longing within me that's just less there I wanted to know these are the kinds of discussions that are difficult because subtle distinctions between the meanings of words because we can get confused I can get confused so let me try to say something knowing that it's a little hard to distinguish but we always have to be practical and figure out what are we really saying

[49:32]

never mind what the words are so I would say that in the Buddhist teaching about craving and grasping he was referring to this tendency that we have to in a sense not be present and instead substitute for our presence a kind of ideology something that takes us away from what's actually going on in our life so craving and grasping always takes us away from what's actually going on in our life it's like I don't want to be here and just be with this person so what can I find out there that will help me to get out of here which of course is impossible that's the thing so I go here and there wanting something and then not noticing what's going on here and then that's craving and then eventually getting something and then hanging on to it which is impossible and then that's grasping that's different from just actually

[50:34]

being with my experience both those things take me away from my experience Buddha didn't talk about this so much but I know other spiritual traditions talk about a sense of longing for belonging which can be a kind of spiritual longing for something greater than ourselves which can be a wholesome thing and maybe translating that into Buddhist terms it could be a desire for the path or the thought of enlightenment that we could be longing for something like that in that case that is not necessarily bringing us away from our own experience but it's a motivating factor within our experience to go deeper with our own experience so we can look at it that way that's how I would respond to what you're saying although we could have totally different ideas of what the word longing means and craving, grasping, so on but anyway, if you can use it, great if you can use it, it works, good yes

[51:34]

you talked in your lecture about maybe I'm paraphrasing the correct terms but how the Buddhist said that there is not a continuation of a self-awareness from lifetime to lifetime or of one's awareness of one's self something like that and I know being brought up Christian that's very opposite of what the Christian doctrine is which is like immortality of the soul which I interpreted to mean that there is some essence within ourselves that goes on forever I wonder how you could balance this how you can grasp this concept without sinking into some kind of nihilism yes I know that over the course of the years

[52:38]

that I've been alive, I've changed there is a sense of some part of me that has this present life that has remained aware and conscious despite that change so you get to the point where death occurs and where there's all this accumulation of experiences and circumstances and interactions and so where it just falls apart and then there's no me, whoever me is how do you deal with that? without, it's just kind of like you're just plunged into the void everything that you experienced yourself is now not there well it's so fortunate that we have easy questions today how do you deal with that?

[53:51]

the Buddha was a very practical guy, I think and he really wasn't interested in he was not a philosopher actually in the sense of being interested in defining reality or explaining reality in fact he thought that explaining reality was in itself a kind of problem so what he was interested in was suffering he was interested in the fact that human beings are suffering and the reason why he was interested in that is because he suffered he noticed his own suffering and misery and he said you know this is not a tenable situation and I've got to find a way to deal with it he found a way to deal with it and of course in finding a way to deal with his own suffering he could understand the suffering of many people and so he began teaching to be helpful to other people in their suffering in the same way that he had helped himself so all Buddhist views are medicine they're not views to be defended they're only views that are useful

[54:52]

because they're antidotes to the views that we have that create suffering now one thing that the Buddha always said was that the two kinds of views that we have that create suffering are the view of nihilism and the view of eternalism if we're nihilistic we're going to suffer because we won't believe nihilism means nothing is real, nothing matters nothing survives, nothing goes on and so it doesn't make any difference what I do why should I bother to live, why should I bother to do good and avoid evil bad actions, why should I be kind to anybody why should I even get up in the morning because what's the point so nihilism is clearly a view that will lead to suffering and so not a helpful view eternalism on the other hand is what I was talking about today eternalism is the view that I am me yesterday, I will be tomorrow my eternal soul goes on and so I've got to defend it and uphold it and so on

[55:52]

that also he said gets to be a problem because that leads to craving and grasping craving and grasping leads to suffering so it's better off not to have such a view like that so that's why the path of the Buddha is called the middle way people usually think of the middle way as meaning a kind of moderation in living like not getting drunk and not being a teetotaler or something the middle way and it does mean that, but it also means philosophically the middle way meaning neither nihilism nor eternalism so the Buddha didn't deny that we have we all know, if you say the Buddha said no self we can all say, oh yeah, no self, no self, but then we get up tomorrow morning and we say, what do you mean no self, I mean I know there's a self that I experience so the Buddha didn't deny that we experience a kind of a self that would be to deny our everyday experience what he said was yes, we have that kind of experience, but what is that how can we understand it in a way that will help our life rather than mess us up

[56:52]

and what he said was you have to understand that self as being radically conditioned you have to understand that self as being participatory and in relation all the time when you understand that and you don't think of it as being separate and ripped out of the fabric of life then you begin to live in that way and when you live in that way there's happiness and peace and we don't realize the extent to which we view ourselves as being separate and ripped out of the fabric of life we don't appreciate it, that sati in that sutra didn't appreciate what he was saying, he didn't really understand the implications of his views for his living, not philosophically but for his living so yes, we have an experience of self but that self is radically conditioned, it comes up everyday and goes away, comes and goes and comes and goes depending on conditions, one of the most powerful conditions for the self as I mentioned is the last moment of self so that's a very powerful conditioning everything that has happened to us in our life

[57:54]

in the stream of karma of our life conditions this moment so naturally we recognize the past and so on and we seem similar now to what we were last year because there's a strong conditioning factor but also other things, in that stream of conditioning factors is not only what's inside of me but also what's outside of me so the person that I am today, not only has to do with my thoughts and feelings but it has to do with the thoughts and feelings of my parents my associates, my society the historical time in which I grew up my individual friends and all my encounters with everybody changes me and makes me who I am and when I appreciate all of that, when I realize I'm not a separate individual out here who owns myself in fact, my life is completely implicated with everything that's around me and I really know that from the bottom of my soul, so to speak then it really changes the way I live I really appreciate my life in a different way and there are certain kinds of behaviors that I'm probably not going to

[58:57]

indulge when I see it that way so something like that is how the Buddha saw the self, he didn't really deny the self, even though the term used is not no self and the reason why the Buddha used that term is because he was debating with philosophers of the period who used the term self so he said, no, not self it's not atman, it's anatman so that's why he used that term, but we can't mistake it for it's not nihilism he argued very strenuously against nihilism as well as against eternalism so conditionality, radical conditionality is neither nihilism nor eternalism it's not that there's no self, that it doesn't exist we have to trust our experience, the experience that we have is the experience that we have, no question about it but how do we understand that experience and how do we work with it and he was trying to point to a way of working with it

[59:58]

that would increase our happiness and decrease our suffering so now there's no doubt that dying is a huge transformation we go through a lot of changes in our life and we know that we've transformed a lot now from what we were when we were a baby we see that it's a huge transformation there, but it's gradual and incrementally, little by little death is definitely a shock it's a huge transformation but the Buddha felt like it was very important to recognize that death was not a total disappearance because, and this is an interesting point that could get us very far astray but the reason why the Buddha felt that was so important was because he thought that it's important to realize that everything that we do and think all of our actions really matter

[60:59]

human beings do things that really matter every one of us is fully empowered to be a person and everything that we do counts when we have a thought when we have just a stray feeling when we make acts of speech, acts with our body these things really matter and they have effects everything that we do has effects and so we have a responsibility and an opportunity in our lives and he really wanted to make that clear so if you believe that when I die it's all gone so I can pull around and when I'm dead it's all gone no, he says the effects of these actions go on forever they continue and you have to respect that now, I remember, I may have told you this before but years ago when we started working on a curriculum to sort of work our path through the study of Buddhism for Zen Center, we met with a wonderful Tibetan Lama who we had studied with a lot called Tara Rinpoche, who was a really great person and he's in the Galupa lineage which specializes in

[62:02]

scholarship and study, so he was a great person for us to consult with and so we said, well now, we can't study everything there's too many things in Buddhism but we're committed to study more than just Zen so what do you think is the most important thing to study? and he said, you have to start out studying why it is that there are past lives because if you don't believe in past lives and future lives, you can't practice Buddhism that's what he said so we thought about this for a long time and he was convinced of this and we really understood why he said that and where he was coming from I don't agree with him for Westerners, I think it's not necessary for us to believe in somehow, past and future lives in order to practice Buddhism however, it is necessary for us to believe that what we do matters and that our life has dimensions that may not

[63:04]

be apparent to us in the visible everyday world I think we do have to feel that way otherwise our practice is just either self-help or superficial so the past life thing is not important first of all, if there's no ongoing self what could a future life mean anyway? it doesn't make sense well yeah, if there's an eternal self that traverses from life to life then I understand that, but if there's no eternal self then how could there be future rebirths? and again, this is a fine point philosophically within Buddhism but something has to do with there's an ongoing activity that's conditioned, right? it's like a stream of water if you say, where is the stream? you can't say anywhere is the stream you say that's a stream, but the water is constantly rushing by and yet conventionally we say, oh that's a stream that's the Tassajara Creek even though there is no Tassajara Creek, there's only endlessly water rushing by

[64:07]

well that's how our life is it looks like, you know, Joe but it's this endlessly rushing by continuum of experience which takes a big bend when life ends so we don't want to minimize the fact that life ending is like a huge trauma and a huge change but the energy of a lifetime doesn't end with death and we know that on a common sense basis, right? if you lose a parent you know that the energy of that parent's life doesn't all of a sudden disappear, they're not blotted from memory blotted from the universe, in fact the energy of their life continues and things that happen and so on and so forth so life's energy continues and changes and goes on, death is a huge watershed but it's not really an ending then then there's one last piece of this then there's a famous story which I really love on this topic

[65:10]

a famous story of Bekaroshi Bekaroshi went to Suzuki Roshi when Suzuki Roshi was dying and if you want to ask somebody a question about what is death and what happens after death that's the time to ask them, when they're very close by so he said to him, Suzuki Roshi was very very ill and just about to die and he said to him, where will we meet again? where will we encounter each other again? and Suzuki Roshi stuck his hand out from the covers and he made a circle with his finger and he didn't say anything so this is how it is the circle of life never ends death is serious not to be trivialized but in conditionality there is no absolute end as there is no absolute beginning there's the ongoingness of life that we all participate in

[66:14]

we come and go, individual appearances come and go but existence is an ongoing continuum that we all and this is it, see when we on our cushion, in our practice come to see that the deepest aspect of who we are is this and we really appreciate, that's who we are we're also, you know, Joe and Harry and Sally too and we know that, but we know also we're this then we can give up our body and mind with some pain of loss of friends and this beautiful world, but we know that we're not going anywhere so this would be a wonderful possibility in our practice and it happens, I mean we hear stories of many spiritual people from all traditions who appreciate this and die with some sense of gratitude and readiness to do so

[67:14]

knowing that it's not kind of absolute end of who they are and what they really are so anyway, sorry I got a long winded answer thank you yes conditionality how does emptiness relate to all this conditionality is a synonym for emptiness to say that you and I are empty of any separate self is to say that you and I are radically conditioned that's what our life is so emptiness and conditionality are absolutely synonyms what is definite co-rising that's conditionality, that means everything that was what I was saying today, everything cooperates to produce every moment and we cooperate along with the universe that's conditioned co-production I was reading the poetry of E.Q.

[68:15]

he was appointed to be head priest of this large temple he lasted for 9 days and he quit because of the hypocrisy around him and he said, if you want to find me, I'll be in the Saki farm and he said with his blind young girlfriend Mori so many love poems to Mori but they had a... they're beautiful because they all had a bittersweet quality, these erotic poems he said that suffering and joy are always equal in a clear heart and the second line was that the mountain can never hide the moon because you climb out well that's a beautiful saying yes I feel that when we let go of our suffering, our self clinging and we just live

[69:18]

then there's equal amounts of sadness and happiness but our understanding is wide enough to embrace both without resistance so this is one of the things I really love about Buddhadharma because I would find it personally maybe you don't agree with me, but personally I would find it tedious to exist in a state of bliss you know it would be rather boring to me it's much preferable to experience human feelings in their whole range but without being tangled up in them this would be nice to be able to experience our feelings and our life fully without being tangled up in it without this feeling of running around in circles

[70:20]

futilely, it would be nice to just go on with life and not do that and I think when this is the case how can we help but being moved by the suffering that we see around us there's really no end to the suffering that we see around us to me our path is not that we sit on the cushion, let go of our confusion and then we go around with a little smile and we're always happy, how could we be happy when we see people around us suffering if we're human how could we not cry and be upset when we see suffering, who would want a path that would liberate us to the extent that we would not be of human feelings when we see suffering and when we see, any one of us we see a child, we can see the joy in that child's life and understand the development of that child's life and know that that child will experience suffering and die, everything that we see we see its development and its beauty

[71:23]

and its impermanence, so there's equal, there's development and there's ending anything in life, you know and that's beautiful and sad at the same time and if we really see anything deeply that's always what we see so this is a deep saying by Ikkyu and he is one of the most colorful figures, although at the end of his life when he was in his 80's he did become abbot of Daitoku-ji he rebuilt it he did a huge construction job after avoiding being an abbot all his life, they finally caught up to him at the end and he was famous for rebuilding Daitoku-ji how do you spell his name? Ikkyu Ikkyu, that's usually spelled Ikkyu, he's actually also one of the key inventors of the tea ceremony he's usually considered the father of the tea ceremony and one of the greatest poets in Japanese history

[72:26]

when he was alive each legend in Japan were his best friends the greatest dancer, the greatest tea master that's right he had a wonderful life you said this morning that the main thing, the only thing that we really grasp and crave is our self and I would like you if you could talk about that idea how it relates to our relationships with other people and the clinging and grasping that at least I know I experience in my life around my relationships with other people, the full range of the most intimate to the least intimate what are we really going after when we go towards someone what is drawing us, is it just ourselves is it really just that we're trying to complete ourselves somehow when there's a longing for another person

[73:29]

yeah well of course this happens a lot and this is why I think there are so many troubles our relationships boy, and I know that from living for so many years with a bunch of people you really see how much suffering there is in our relationships and how difficult it is and yeah when we have this self in front of us living like this then other people are there for us to give us that piece of the self that's missing or to tell us how great we are or whatever, in other words other people are there to enhance this self and that's where the trouble starts because we don't see them, we don't notice them we're too busy worrying about ourselves and we may feel tremendous love and regard for somebody but it may just be because of our need and we don't notice them so when that's the case

[74:31]

then it's guaranteed relationships will be troublesome and difficult and full of anguish and pain would it be nice if we could just appreciate those who we come into contact with for who they are and actually deeply listen to them and let go of ourselves what are they saying, who are they, what are they presenting so rare is it that we find someone who actually listens to us and actually seems to know who we are and appreciates us it's kind of rare, actually, because most of us are going around crashing into each other with our various needs and confusions and we're all needy, like no one cares about me no one's listening to me, everybody just wants their own so we would aspire in our practice to be a person who can let go of ourselves sufficiently to be able to listen to someone and appreciate someone for who they are and then out of that, so this is what love is, I think real love is, yes, I appreciate you I'm not trying to make you different I don't need you to be somebody for me I just appreciate you, because there you are

[75:34]

you're a person that, I mean, look at this the vast causes and conditions came together in this unbelievable way to produce you, this moment and I'm staggered and amazed by this and I really appreciate it, I think it's wonderful and so I'm so interested in whatever it is you are presenting to me at this moment even if it's all kinds of craziness and everything, that's interesting too wow, you know, how did that happen to make that move? so, you know, that's love and then if conditions and then usually we're concerned about romantic love as well and if conditions are such that that this person who we love and we're intimate with in front of us if conditions are such that we become committed in an intimate relationship with them then that's great and if it's not appropriate and not to be that way then let's not get in trouble you know, so

[76:37]

that would be nice if we had a world like that but then it's just astonishing it's astonishing to me I mean, it's hard to appreciate how, I mean, it's one thing I can understand, when we live together we get in hassles that's easy to understand, what I can't understand what I find so troubling and so difficult is to see people killing one another because the other person holds the wrong belief or is the wrong color or is the wrong ethnicity or something like that I find that absolutely staggering and I mean, every day I find instances of this that I know about in our world and I just find it absolutely unbelievable that this could be I mean, do you know that there's more people displaced now in other words, homeless, wandering around looking for a place to be than there ever has been and even after World War II

[77:41]

when the whole Europe was shot and destroyed there's more people now wandering around in the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union and here and there whose homes have been destroyed, don't have anywhere to live refugee communities, people trying to get in from one country to the other and they're saying you can't come in more than ever in the history as a direct result of this sort of thing after 2,000 years more than 3,000 years of historical development I find it staggering and unbelievable and it just makes me feel like we really have to practice each one of us really has to not be that person who would do such a thing and each one of us has to take responsibility not to be that person and to own the extent to which we are because we all are it's not unusual, we can't condemn the person who goes around shooting people because we feel that way too we're paranoid and we're fearful of others and we're self-clinging and we have our ideologies

[78:42]

so we have to notice that and put that down and work on being another person that doesn't harm others and can appreciate others because it's a desperate situation actually we have to do that and we have to spread that feeling throughout the world because it's just a nasty thing so anyway I want to ask you about feelings and there's every potential life coming across in the spiritual community and the first thing they all talk about is no self and I got it I get really confused about that because there's some talk about self and the non-self and it's like it's the self that we're trying to get rid of that we're apparently not is that the feelings and the mind and yet my teacher would say

[79:44]

you're not that, you're this, you're emptiness I feel that too, but I also know I have a strong feeling about this and I have a strong feeling about this so there's a lot of no, no, you're not that you're angered, no, no, you're really not that you are this I sit there and when I'm feeling angry I'm all confused here there's a lot of confusion around that well we're not trying to get rid of anything in our practice I don't think so and I would never tell somebody if you say you're not your anger well that's true in the sense that your anger is not an eternal mark of yourself that's true but if I say you're not your anger and you take that to me well then that doesn't exist or it's not real or I should get out of it I wouldn't say that and of course this comes up all the time in our community and I always tell people that if you're angry

[80:45]

then you have to own your anger yes I'm angry, this feeling is definitely arising within me and then I say to people, you can't get rid of it if you say you can get rid of it, it just makes more you get angry at your anger so I say understand your anger study your anger, be clear about your anger what does it look like, how does it make your body feel what are the causes and conditions that have produced it what are the results of anger, what happens when you act on anger what happens when you don't and can you be aware, I always say to people and can you be aware in a meticulous way of your body at the time of anger, can you be aware of your posture can you be aware of your breathing, as much as possible allowing anger to be anger, can you be aware of it today I'm going to go and do a wedding and in the wedding I administer the Bodhisattva precepts

[81:46]

and one of the Bodhisattva precepts is a disciple of the Buddha does not harbor ill will does not harbor anger and I make a comment to that, I say when anger arises, understand it as anger appreciate that this is anger but don't hold it close, don't grasp it don't make a big deal out of it just say this is anger, I have to be with my anger and as much as I can, not make more of it that's called not harboring ill will but what we often do is, I'm angry at you and I have a good reason for being angry at you it's because you did this and you did that and you're like this and you're like that and blah blah blah on and on and on and on, what am I doing when I'm doing that I'm encouraging anger, I'm making more anger so the justifications and the resentments and all the stories that we tell ourselves about why it's okay for me to be angry and blah blah blah that's the part we don't really need to have

[82:48]

I am anger, this is what anger feels like this is what anger looks like, this is what it tastes like this is the harm that anger causes to me I feel that and so on the virtue of anger of course is that anger is energy anger rights wrongs right, so we need to be sophisticated about this right, so I want to transmute my anger first of all I want to be able to discriminate between anger that is simply stupid and self-centered and completely unprofitable and anger that has energy in it for the good because my intention is to be for the good so if I have anger that has energy for the good let me then know how to use that energy for the good

[83:48]

and not get tripped up in my anger so the truth is if I'm angry at say social injustice the good part is I have energy to correct it the bad part is I'm so angry that I'm confused and completely ineffective so how can I honor the energy and not be so confused and then I can work with that by studying my anger and understanding my anger I think one has to come down enough to be able to know how to be effective and then we can work with what goes on and also it's contextual too I'm used to working with western students and have for many many years it's different

[84:48]

the psychology of say Tibetans is different so when you hear Tibetans teach about this they may present it differently because the way they present it really makes sense in the context of their society and their family system etc. so I think the Buddha was the person who one of the first decisions that the Buddha made is he said to his disciples you go and teach in the language of the people that you are teaching which is different from other traditions who said there's a holy language you must teach in Hebrew or you must teach in Sanskrit the Buddha said no, whatever language they're speaking teach in that language seems like a trivial thing but actually it's a very deep thing what he was saying was the teaching has to be adopted be careful about it but listen deeply to what people are presenting and understand the essence of the teaching and then figure out a way to make it make sense when you say blah blah blah and you see all of a sudden people are falling down and hitting one another and going through you say wow it says that in the scripture but maybe that's not the way to put that

[85:49]

think again about it so then you see and you figure out what helps in this way so that's part of it too I was thinking about that very point with His Holiness the Dalai Lama who has plenty to be angry about he's not an angry man he just has this great compassionate heart it's interesting to figure out what is his secret for that we know what his secret is right? right? don't we? Buddhadharma right? I mean Dalai Lama practices Buddhism every day he spends major time from the time of a little boy I think that's the secret well it's effective would we all be here if we didn't think so? maybe we would, I don't know, I hope not yeah DJ this is connected to the previous question because I'm confused now

[86:53]

let's take an emotion or a behavior that comes from that emotion it seems to me that that is not necessarily us and that our real true self or whatever self would be is going to be something that's more unconditioned whether we call it pure awareness or pure consciousness but because of conditioning from the time we were born and the way we grew up and all these outside influences biological chemical reactions that happen in our brain we interpret certain situations and we respond in certain ways that become our behaviors at least that's what I thought I'm having an ongoing debate with a friend of mine who is convinced that she is her behaviors so if I was to say well I don't know if this behavior really serves you then that's an attack of her true core essence in her eyes because I'm saying that that behavior might not be that good

[87:58]

and I'm saying no, no, it's just that particular thing that is being displayed that core essence is untouched and now I'm not sure if that's a correct view if that's the view that I thought was accurate but could you comment on that? well uh of course it never pays I hope your wedding goes more easily bound to of course it never pays to debate with a friend about their behavior, right? I get it however, but then let me see now looking at that again from another angle you know, somebody told her that she was not her anger and she heard

[88:59]

I got to get rid of this anger or this anger doesn't exist that was not a helpful thing for her so it may be perfectly true but it was not a helpful thing for her so it depends like I say, the Buddha was not interested in views or truth the Buddha was interested in what works and what reduces our suffering we have to have accurate ideas in order to reduce our suffering but words are slippery one person's yes is another person's no so what's really yes but nevertheless listen, it never pays to debate with somebody about their behavior let your friend do what he or she believes and hope for the best for them and don't do anything to harm them

[90:01]

and try to be helpful and you can't talk anybody into something that they really believe in that they're convinced of I suppose there is a tradition of Buddhist debate but in the Zen school from my perspective I would never debate somebody about anything like that if I see that somebody is fixed on something I say, be my guest, please if you have to continue in this way for several lifetimes until you are ready to stop please do it if I can be helpful in any way, let me be helpful but I'm not going to try to talk you out of it sometimes in fact our effort to try to talk somebody out of something makes them even more firm in the way that they feel maybe they're ready to give up this idea but the fact that you keep saying this then they can insist even more I've noticed that that happens too and then sometimes somebody says this behavior is me and they say that and they insist on it

[91:03]

and what they're really saying is it's so exhausting to live this way sometimes they're really saying that how does that apply to raising children? well, I would think it would be the same thing to talk one's youngster out of something that they passionately believe would never work sometimes you have to say, I'm sorry, you can't do that so then they say, but, but, but you say, well I know, but that's it here's where I'm coming from, this is my understanding you have your understanding, I appreciate that but I'm responsible for your safety and I'm concerned about you and so I'm saying this it's always nice as children get older to talk to them, sometimes you say I can see where you're coming from so I'll change there's flexibility nothing would be worse in the case of this kind of situation or raising children

[92:04]

people think that they have to insist on authority like, well I don't really believe this but I better stick to it because otherwise it undermines my authority to me that's baloney, authority is this moment, authority is our life so I don't have to dig in to a position in order to establish my authority I think flexibility and authority are not opposites it seems to me, so we have to be sophisticated again, and children are unbelievably smart I know if I'm teaching school it's unbelievable, there can be a substitute teacher walks in to the room and in five minutes, thirty children know exactly what that person's strong and weak points are exercising them instantly, so you have to appreciate that children have some sort of inborn sense

[93:04]

and then they poke you in those places and then you say, well I'm going to assert my authority here and that's the death, if you substitute teacher then you're completely dead and you start saying that you have to assert your authority because in other words my authority is in my life, it's my whole life right here, that's where my authority is my authority is not in this view that I'm going to assert once I think my authority is not here in my life, it's in this view then I'm dead, right? then I'm in an endless fight with my child in an endless fight with my husband or girlfriend or boyfriend and then we have misery on top of misery confusion, grief, lamentation, despair suffering and the conclusion to our morning's discussion

[93:55]

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