This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Here's this Dogen essay for those who would like a copy. And maybe if you're not going to come back, give it back at the end of the day. That's about 20 copies here, I think. What would you like? We might not... It's a very short essay. We might not even get into this sheet today. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So... Today and tomorrow and the next day, we'll have a three-day Genzoe study week.

[01:07]

And everyone's welcome to come. Some are here just for the study week. Some live here. Genzoe is a retreat studying an essay. in Dogen's Shobogenzo. So this is, I don't know how many hundreds of years they've been doing this type of thing in Japan, Genzo A. Shobogenzo means True Dharma Eye Treasury, so Genzo is an abbreviation, meaning like the Eye Treasury, the Wisdom Eye Treasury, and A means Assembly or Gathering. So we have an Eye Treasury Gathering. to study an essay from this I Treasury of Dogen Zenji, the founder of Soto Zen in medieval Japan. These Genzewe retreats have been offered for centuries because Dogen is just such an amazing writer and thinker and he has 95 fascicle, 95 essay collection

[02:26]

teachings of Buddhadharma on all different topics. So usually these Genzo A retreats will take up one fascicle, one essay of Dogen. So this Genzo A study week will look at Shobogenzo Shouji. Shouji means birth and death. Birth and death is the title of this very short essay of Dogen in the 95 fascicles of Shobo Genzo. It's the shortest one of all. Sometimes there's 10, 20 pages. This is like half a page. And partly I chose this because I've done some of these Genzo Way retreats at Santa Cruz Zen Center where I live and practice. And we usually, you know, it's 10 or 15 hours of talking about a fascicle to really get into it. So we only have three afternoons So I thought, pick a short one. I mean, we could read the whole thing in three minutes, but to really, in the spirit of Genzoe, it's line by line with all the background and really unpacking it.

[03:38]

And I think it's a great essay of Dogen. It's really pertinent to our practice life. This fascicle is... Undated. Most of Dogen's essays have a date when he wrote them. We know when he wrote them or presented them. This is one of the few undated ones. So in the 95 fascicle Shobogenzo, they just stuck it near the end, 90-something. There's another Shobogenzo essay called Total Dynamic Working, Undivided Activity, Zenki. And that was taught in 1242. And when I look at these two essays, they're very, very similar. They're both all about birth and death. Zenki is all about birth and death also, and they have a very similar style. So if I had to guess when this was written, I would say around 1242, maybe at the same time as this other essay.

[04:44]

But we don't know. Soji, birth and death, is the Chinese and Japanese way of translating the Sanskrit term samsara, which is an important term in Buddhism. Samsara means, literally means like, sam means like together, like we say, parasangate, all together, gone beyond or sangha, sangha. It's the same sam as in sangha, which is like the community together. So samsara means like together flowing is the etymology. And it's this cyclic existence is a common translation.

[05:47]

It's the cycling around through birth and death. That's why the Chinese translate it in a very concise way as birth and death. Transmigrating from life to life, birth to birth, and even within this very life, moment to moment where there's a birth and a death happening each moment. And particularly samsars like this... This cycle of birth and death is driven by delusion and our karmic habitual patterns. It's a cycle of bondage. Samsara is like the basic problem in the Buddhist teachings from the early days. Actually, pre-Buddhist term in India, a lot of these... philosophical systems, spiritual traditions in India used a lot of the same language.

[06:49]

So samsara was already there as we're stuck in this revolving through birth and death, this kind of blind being pushed through birth and death, driven by karma and infused with discontent and unease. of a definition of samsara, birth and death. And so Dogen is using this term birth and death mostly in this way as the standard translation of samsara, but then he also, as he often does, he breaks apart the term of birth and death and talks about birth and death separately. So that's the nice thing about that Chinese way of translating samsara is you can play with, well there's birth and then there's death. The original Sanskrit term, you can't really break it apart like that. So one of the themes here is samsara and its relationship to this other important term, nirvana.

[08:02]

Nirvana, as a Sanskrit term, also existed before the Buddha's time. And literally, again, sort of enema-logically, we can look at nirvana. Nir is like just a negation, a negative term, like un or non. I'm afraid the term like nirvikalpa. Vikalpa means thinking. Nirvikalpa, samadhi, is like a meditation without any conceptuality. Nirodha means cessation, it's the same near, so it's just the negative particle. And vana, there's some debate about this, what this means, but it might be related to this flowing, it's samsara's together flowing, this is like the end of this flowing.

[09:07]

Some say it's related to like a flame, a fire gone out. So vana is like a kind of fire or flame and nirvana is like the ending of a fire. And one prominent early Buddhist teacher says the etymology of nirvana comes from that vana means binding or like the way that fire is bound to its fuel. And this was understood in India that the way fire works is that there's some kind of energy of fire and when it's bound to its fuel, like wood, gasoline, something, that that's when it's active. And when fire goes out, it means that the fire energy is like separated from its fuel. maybe a little different than modern science would understand fire.

[10:13]

But I think that's a nice etymology of nirvana as this binding. And then you have un, so one modern translator translates nirvana as unbinding, the unbinding of our life from this diluted driven cycle of samsara. Free. Freedom is a loose translation of nirvana. Freedom or liberation. And so usually these are taught in pre-Buddhist and early Buddhist tradition as really like these polar opposites. Samsara is this driven cycle of suffering. Nirvana is the freedom from that. So it's an important pair of terms.

[11:14]

But what is the relationship between them? I think that's mainly what this essay, Shobogenzo Shoji by Dogen, is about the relationship between birth and death, cycle of samsara, and this freedom of nirvana from a Mahayana Zen perspective. And before delving into Dogen's essay, I think it's good to look at the tradition that he's always... Dogen, I think, is very much in accord with all the Indian tradition before him. He's very creative in restating things in a new, fresh way, but... I almost never find that he's making something up totally new that's not in accord with all the Dharma that's come before him.

[12:16]

And I think that's how the tradition of Buddhadharma evolves. In general, there's certain teachings of the Buddha that are kind of unarguable, I might say. and that the Buddhist tradition keeps evolving new creative ways of understanding and expressing them. But if they deviate too far from the original teachings, then it's like it's not really Buddha Dharma anymore. Dogen's very careful about this, I think, and very creative about expressing it in new ways. So an important teaching that's all woven through Dogen's teachings and all through Buddha's teachings, especially the Mahayana, is the teaching of the two truths. So you may have heard about this, maybe not. I've heard that there was one American Buddhist teacher who went to His Holiness the Dalai Lama and said, for someone just starting out

[13:29]

in Buddhist practice or just wanting to understand Buddhism from the get-go, what do you think is the most basic and important thing? What's the starting point for understanding Buddhism, Buddhadharma? We might think, well, how about the Three Refuges or the Four Noble Truths? And I was surprised to hear this, that the Dalai Lama said, I think the best starting point is the Two Truths. It's kind of a somewhat subtle teaching, especially when you really get into it, and in some ways it's quite basic on the surface. So I found that interesting, that it's a starting point. So if it seems like it's too advanced or something, Dalai Lama says it's a good starting point. The two truths are called

[14:30]

conventional truth and ultimate truth. This is going to, like, presenting this because it's going to play out in this whole conversation about samsara and nirvana and also about all through Dogen's birth and death fascicle. We have a conventional truth, so defining terms, some more here. Conventional truth in Sanskrit is samvritti satya. Satya means truth. Samvritti has its two multiple aspects. One means conventional, I think is a good definition. Again, there's that sam in there. I think it's the same sam as samsara and samvritti. Together, I'm not sure exactly vritti, but together, um, agreement, we might say.

[15:31]

Um, conventional is a nice way to translate because it's like, um, conventional means sort of like standard understanding of the world, conventional understanding, but, uh, has that nice meaning in English, too, that, like, it's, it's decided by a convention. Con is maybe a little bit like some, right? A convention. It's like a group of people together deciding. It's kind of like the conventional truth of the world. It's like, it's what the world kind of agrees on, even though it might be kind of not so accurate. Like, um, like we all agree that this, we might all agree, or maybe the majority of us agree, that this is the small retreat hall at Tassajara. It's like a conventional truth with, you know, the convention of maybe that some people at Zen Center decided to name this building the small retreat hall at some point.

[16:40]

And it has to do a lot with names, too, right? So we name it the small retreat hall, and then we... we like say, that's what we're going to call it. Maybe a few people argue, no, we should call it the Avalokiteshvara hall because there she is on the altar. People are like, no, that's too obscure. The yoga retreat people won't understand. Let's call it the small retreat hall. And like enough people agree, the majority agrees. And then now it is that conventionally speaking, the small retreat hall. That's the kind of conventional truth. It's a little bit arbitrary and it's flexible. It can actually change. It could be renamed next year the Avalokiteshvara hall. And then that would be the new, if enough people agree, that would be a new conventional truth. So the conventional truth is not totally fixed. But it seems kind of fixed.

[17:43]

Like to say that this is a building, it's going to be even harder to change that convention. more people agree on that. To call it, like, an airplane, you know, it's going to be hard to get enough people to agree on that. But, you know, if we put wings on it, um, and, uh, you know, like, pilot seat at the front or something, it might get some, especially kids, might start agreeing that it's, that it's actually an airplane. Kids maybe have different conventional truths. So conventional meaning like it's just agreed upon by the world in a somewhat arbitrary way, you know, based on certain conditions, but it's flexible. Then samvritti also has this other meaning of concealer, concealing. It's a concealer truth, which means that it kind of hides the ultimate truth.

[18:43]

In a way, conceal has a sort of double meaning, too, is that it hides ultimate truth, and it also reveals ultimate truth. Like a covering, almost. So it covers the ultimate truth, and yet it's the very place, when uncovered, that reveals the ultimate truth. The ultimate truth is not revealed some other place other than behind this particular covering. So a concealer truth. Now we might say, is it really truth? But it is called satya. Truth. But a kind of worldly, conventional truth. So then the other of the two truths is ultimate. Ultimate truth. Paramartha satya. Param means something like ultimate. And arta means meaning.

[19:53]

It can also mean object in Sanskrit. So you could say the ultimate meaning truth or could be understood as the ultimate object of realization. It's the object of observation to set one free. Conventional truth and ultimate truth. And they're two different truths, not to be confused, and yet they're also not separate. They're like two different aspects of one reality at the same time. Two different ways of perceiving the same reality, I could say. two sides of one coin.

[20:56]

And it said that the Buddha can actually perceive these two truths simultaneously. A Buddha is the only type of being that can actually perceive the conventional truth and the ultimate truth at the same time. So for most people, We only perceive conventional truth. Even we might have a conceptual idea of ultimate truth, we're still not directly perceiving ultimate truth. But on the bodhisattva path, it's possible to have glimpses of ultimate truth, but it's usually not at the same time as conventional truth. It's like at the time of ultimate truth, the conventional truth is actually obscure. There isn't For example, there isn't a retreat hall, just in a direct perception of ultimate truth.

[21:56]

There is no retreat hall. And then we come back into the next moment, we might again see it as a retreat hall. But a Buddha can see no retreat hall and retreat hall simultaneously, which is inconceivable to us how that's possible. So ultimate truth. also is the teachings of emptiness. So, most people probably know the Heart Sutra. In a way, it's about this union of the two truths also. It's mainly emphasizing the ultimate truth, but kind of the heart of the Heart Sutra, that form itself is emptiness, and emptiness itself is form. That's actually talking about the relationship of the two truths. Now one is the other form and all the other five skandhas are just conventional truths but they are themselves emptiness.

[22:59]

And emptiness itself is form and feelings and perceptions and so on. In one of the very early teachings of the Buddha, in talking about nirvana, defining nirvana, nirvana is kind of connected with this ultimate truth. It's one of the classic sources in the early pre-Mahayana teachings called the Udana, the Pali Canon. It's called the Nibbana Sutta. the Sutra on Nirvana, Nibbana in Pali. The Buddha says, I, well, the Sutra says, thus have I heard, on one occasion the Blessed Woman was staying at Jetta's Grove, and at that time the Buddha was instructing, urging, rousing, and encouraging the monks with Dharma talk concerning Nirvana, Nibbana.

[24:21]

The monks, receptive, attentive, focusing their entire awareness, lending ear, listening to the dharma. This is a good way to listen to dharma, especially about nirvana, to really take in these teachings on nirvana. It's hard if we're not focusing our entire awareness, receptive and attentive to such teachings. The Buddha said, There is that dimension where there is neither earth nor water nor fire nor wind, so the five elements, there aren't those, neither infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, or neither perception nor non-perception, which are these really refined meditative states, saying it's not even that. Neither this world, nor the next world, nor sun, nor moon.

[25:23]

And there, I say, there is no coming, no going, no staying, no passing away, no arising. Unestablished, unevolving, without support of any object. Just this is the end of suffering. The end of discontent. So that's one kind of nice early definition of nirvana. And, in fact, what's the point of talking about any of this anyway? This is the ending of stress. I just translated it here, the end of discontent, the end of suffering. That's the point of the teachings of nirvana. That's the point of emptiness teachings. They're kind of fun, philosophically speaking. to play with and so on, but actually this is the end of suffering.

[26:29]

And we might even go so far as to say there is no real, reliable, stable and complete ending of suffering without realizing nirvana. So, as practitioners, This could be our central concern. We could say it in many ways, but however we say it, is this not our central concern? So this is a kind of four-part teaching about nirvana here to kind of define it further in the early teachings. Again, when he's instructing, urging, rousing and encouraging the monks, talking about nirvana, and they receptive, focusing their entire awareness, the Buddha said, It's hard to see that which is unaffected by anything, for the truth isn't easily seen.

[27:37]

Something about nirvana is that it's not affected by anything. Craving is pierced in one who knows. For one who sees, there is nothing. Brief, pithy definition of nirvana. And then maybe the most classic one is this. The Buddha says, There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, If there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, there would not be the case that emancipation and freedom from the born, become, made, and fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, then emancipation from the born, become, made, and fabricated is discerned.

[28:42]

Nirvana is often taught as what it's not. It's often taught in the negative. It's the unborn, unfabricated, unmade. It's usually not taught as positive, like, well, what is it? He's taught about what it's not, because as soon as we say what it is, it limits it, and we have some conceptual way to grasp it. Occasionally, the Buddha would say things like, Nirvana is bliss. It's something positive. which is a little dangerous because we want to grasp that one. We'd like some bliss, please. But the blissful nirvana is the unmade, unfabricated, unborn. And then we have teachings like in the Heart Sutra, all dharmas, all conventional phenomena are marked by emptiness. They neither arise nor cease, are neither defiled nor pure, neither increase nor decrease.

[29:52]

We chant in the Heart Sutra. Very much like a description of nirvana, all dharmas are marked by this nirvanic aspect, which is a way of talking about nirvana. Usually we think of it as this realization. a person realizes nirvana, they realize this blissful freedom, but actually all dharmas are marked by emptiness, which has the same description as nirvana, unarisen, unceased, and so on, not coming, not going. And there are sutras like this, the sutra unraveling the deep meaning, which in which the Buddha says, all dharmas are unarisen, unceased, quiescent from the start and naturally in a state of nirvana, which when I first heard that I was surprised.

[31:01]

All phenomena are naturally in a state of nirvana. I thought people, sentient beings are in a state of nirvana, but actually phenomena. are naturally in a state of nirvana. So this is two types of nirvana, you could say, like this naturally abiding nirvana of all phenomena, and then there's the nirvana that's realized by sentient beings, which is basically realizing this naturally abiding way that everything is free from arising and ceasing. Does that make sense? In other words, everything is nirvanic already. We don't make things nirvana, but we can realize the way that things actually already are from the start. So you can see it, maybe start to see how this samsara is kind of connected to the conventional truth, and nirvana is kind of related to the ultimate truth.

[32:08]

So if we're looking at the relationship between samsara and nirvana, as Dogen's going to do here, starting with looking at this relationship between conventional and ultimate, it seems like the starting point. We might say, well, Dogen doesn't get all this logical and rational, does he? But he uses very kind of unusual, sometimes poetic language. But the more I study Dogen, the more I feel like there's this razor-sharp logic he's using. He's not just messing around with wacky words. Some people might say so. I think occasionally you can find things where here I think he's just having fun and he's just playing with language. But the more I unpack it, especially based on the earlier... Indian teachings, the more I see it's very particular what Dogen is doing. He's just, again, a very creative way of putting it. So it's not illogical at all.

[33:15]

There's one translation of Dogen essays, a book called Rational Zen. Do we really think of Dogen as rational Zen? The proposal of that translator is totally rational. strange to our samsaric minds, to what Dogen is saying. So in India, Mahayana Buddhism, the master of these two truths, teachings, is our ancestor Nagarjuna. He's a Zen ancestor. But it's just amazing what he does in his teachings. very difficult, but very, again, razor-sharp logic, um, revealing, in a conceptual way, through words, revealing the nature of it is two truths.

[34:21]

Words alone, of course, don't cut it, or we wouldn't bother sitting zazen in a wordless way, but, um, But without a clear conceptual understanding of what zazen actually is, I think it's very easy to just kind of rest in a comfortable way there and not evolve towards this complete unbinding. I think we need conceptual wisdom. And otherwise we wouldn't read Dogen either, right? And Dogen is conceptual wisdom. And, uh, We unify our understanding, deepen our understanding, and unify that with non-conceptual just sitting. The teachings clarify just sitting, they reveal just sitting, and they celebrate just sitting. So this is Nagarjuna, a great yogi and philosopher in India.

[35:29]

talking about the two truths, the fundamental wisdom of the middle way. Nagarjuna is this expounder of the middle way. And he's got a whole chapter on the two truths, basically. And I think this is just a nice central section here. Nagarjuna says, the Buddha's teaching of the Dharma is based on two truths, a truth of worldly convention the samvritti satya, and the ultimate truth, paramartha satya. Those who do not understand the distinction between these two truths do not understand the Buddha's profound truth. We might ask, what the Dalai Lama, but do you really think this is the starting point? It's so profound. Navarjuna says it's very profound. And yet it's the basis, you could say, for all kinds of, how we understand all kinds of different practices can fit into conventional truths, ultimate truths, all kinds of teachings can fit into these two and how they work together.

[36:44]

So Nagarjuna says, without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate truth cannot be taught or understood. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation cannot be achieved. I think a really classic verse. Verse 10, chapter 24 of Nagarjuna's middle way verses. Again, without a foundation in the conventional truth, like really understanding the conventions of the world, for example, like karma, cause and effect, bodhisattva precepts, the first five paramitas, and so on, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught or understood. It's like you can't just jump, right? Everything is empty and the conventions don't matter. They have to be together.

[37:45]

And yet, without understanding the significance of the ultimate truth, liberation is not achieved. So if we just practice, understand, and realize the conventional truth, it's pretty good. There's some liberation, I would even say, quite a bit, but really complete liberation from suffering can't be realized without realizing ultimate truth of emptiness. They go right together, they're right there. The concealer truth is wrapped right around the ultimate truth, we could say. ultimate truth, not some other place. It's totally intimate with the conventional truth. Without foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. Without understanding the significance of the ultimate, liberation cannot be achieved. Another way of talking about conventional truth is

[38:52]

the arising, the interdependent arising of all appearing phenomena, like the retreat hall appears to arise to our minds right now, dependent on various conditions, like, in a more gross way, depends on the ceilings and floors and walls and the parts of the retreat hall. You put them all together, you suddenly have a retreat hall. And even more kind of simple and gross, it depends on the people who built it and so on. I think we often look at dependent arising like that. I don't think that's so... It's maybe... It's a warm-up to really looking at dependent co-arising in its really liberating aspect, which is basically the kind of subtle and most... the most liberating aspect of dependent co-arising because it's the way we're continuously binding ourselves is the retreat hall depends on the name retreat hall in other words we are projecting retreat hall-ness onto the retreat hall when we say retreat hall we actually think there's a retreat hall that there's some in that name there's some actual retreat hall

[40:17]

Now, of course, when we say this and we look at it, we think, no, we don't really. But in fact, if you're down in the past, at the other end of Tassajara, and somebody says, I'm going to the retreat hall now, I'll meet you there. And we immediately picture this image. Just that name immediately brings up this whole image of this building. And I'll meet you in the corner by the Avalokiteshvara altar or something. immediately have this image and we think that it actually exists out there, right, apart from the word that we're creating it right there at the other end of Tassajara. So this way that we're, it's dependent on our basically conceptual imputations is I think the really pivotal way of dependent co-arising a conventional world. The conventional world depends on a bunch of people agreeing to call a collection of walls and ceilings and floors a retreat hall.

[41:27]

Some of you have probably heard this kind of thing lots before. If you haven't, maybe it's starting to sound really weird. Maybe I should stop and see if this is making sense. Can you see how the retreat hall actually depends on our idea, which is very much connected with the word retreat hall? Questions about that? Yes? Yes. It kind of depends on perspective. Kind of depends on perspective. Yeah, right. So, like, for example, ants that are crawling around right outside and maybe even in what we call the retreat hall.

[42:33]

For them, it's not actually a retreat hall, right? And it's not even a collection of walls and ceilings. It's like some whole universe or something, right? Um... For them, it's actually not. So in that way, it's a matter of perspective. Even if you had humans who, some group of humans that have been living out in the Ventana wilderness for the past 300 years in some little cave out there, suddenly wander into Tassajara. It's like, what is that? It must be a spaceship. We say, no, no, it's a retreat hall. I don't know what you're talking about. So yeah, even amongst humans, it's a matter of perspective. And even, like, how do you say retreat hall in Spanish? Yeah, so if somebody didn't speak English at all, it's actually, it's not even a retreat hall. It's, you know, one of those.

[43:39]

Yeah, so it depends on our particular conceptualizations. The conventional truth depends on a particular perspective as particular people and conventions of people. And, you know, even within humans, it's like a group of Zen humans might see this as like a place for Zen gatherings. but someone who's just a yoga practitioner just sees it as a yoga studio. Maybe quite similar. Still maybe. And maybe they actually see, they perceive the room in a somewhat different kind of way as a yoga practitioner or as someone in a Zen class. Slightly different, maybe quite similar, but a little different. And this is all kind of fleshing out what I mean by the conventional truth.

[44:45]

It depends on these conventions, different types of people and beings. And it's very flexible, right? It can change at any moment into something else. It arises and ceases depending on different projections of mind. Sometimes you hear the expression of consensus reality. Yeah, that's good. Consensus is a lot like convention. Yeah. And there's people, especially, you know, a kind of mental health liberation movement, you know, the so-called insane or mental ill, just kind of around the edges of consensus reality. Yeah. Yeah, and maybe have their own consensus reality. Just like kids playing in the sandbox, thinking it's like they're building real castles. They have their consensus reality.

[45:49]

And the adults might say, well, that's not really a fish or a castle that you just built. No, it really is. But as kids, we don't mind so much, right? But if they become adults and then they really think it is, then we lock them up. So I think that's very true where it's not fair. Just like some people maybe in maybe other religious traditions might like to lock us up for talking in this weird kind of way, right? This is not like, this is a consensus reality we might have if we're studying Nagarjuna. But other people might say that's heresy. To talk about the world is just like some arbitrary consensus, because this is real. Even like a, I was going to say like a physicist might say this is real, but actually I think modern physicists are starting to say, well, maybe not.

[46:50]

Maybe it's not so solid as it seems. Whereas the ultimate truth actually doesn't depend on these conventions, and it doesn't come and go. It's not arising or ceasing. strangely. So it gets kind of dangerous because then we think, well, is there some real fixed thing that isn't just dependent on our ideas? It's almost like that. But in fact, it's not because it's not something. That's why it's usually taught as a negation, like emptiness. Some people like to say, well, can we call it fullness instead? Which is some virtue in saying all dharmas are marked by fullness. They include everything. But it leaves a little more room for like, oh, now I have this kind of full, it's the whole oneness of everything. We can kind of get a hold of that a little bit more than emptiness, which is like an absence.

[47:54]

All dharmas are marked by this absence of fixed nature. It leaves us less to hold on to. I think that's why the middle way people they take everything away but they don't give you much back to hold on to. And that's why the Heart Sutra says, all dhammas are marked by emptiness. In emptiness there's no arising, no ceasing, no coming and going, etc. But the ultimate truth is unarising and unceasing. And as we just heard in the early sutra, nirvana is the unformed, unfabricated, unmade arisen unceased. Samsara is kind of together flowing, that we together make samsara and it's our projections held as real. So it's particularly, samsara is like the conventional world and I would say with this aspect

[49:04]

that usually goes along with it, that we actually believe that the conventional world is like reality. And so we might hear this and say, I don't believe that. I can see how it's really, we're just projecting it. But in fact, even if we know this conceptually, we still live as if the, we take another step as if the floor will support us, right? We really, um, In a way, that's kind of a grasping of the conventional truth, maybe quite subtle. It could even be clear conceptually. It's really empty, but we live in it as if it's more real than it appears when we start to conceptually deconstruct it, logically deconstruct it. That's where the meditation part comes in, is integrating, remembering how it's a construction and it can be deconstructed.

[50:11]

And then letting the mind, in zaza, letting the mind actually drop away its constructing patterns. the habitual patterns of constructing, which can get more and more subtle. Like in Zazen, if we're really, you know, upset, we're really angry at something somebody said earlier today, sometimes we can catch how absurd that is. We're like sitting in this peaceful room, so beautiful, with all these quiet people, and we're fuming, right? And we're really there with that person who said that. How am I going to get back at them? We're totally caught up in it. It's amazing. We can do that, right? I mean, in a way, it's beautiful that we can do that. Our minds are that powerful to do that. And yet we can sometimes catch that, like, that actually, that's argument from earlier today. It's not happening in Zazen right now. My mind is really just constructing it now.

[51:14]

So that's maybe an obvious one. Still hard. After years, we can still do that. But then we can also start to explore more subtleties of Zazen, how... We're not constructing a horrific nightmare, necessarily, but now we're just constructing, I'm sitting in zazen. And, like, in fact, I'm quite concentrated. In fact, this is the best zazen period I've ever had. And, you know, it's a subtler construction, but it's still, like, we're just, it's not really free. We're still, it's a conventional construction of a very nice zazen. So any kind of, like, world and also duality comes in here. The conventional truth is, like, where there's mind and objects, there's self and other, this illusion of separateness. That's almost always operating in some level to a really, you know, we can play with this.

[52:18]

We can examine this. We'll hear the sound of the bird. It's a little sense of, like... There's someone here hearing the sound of the bird. Maybe in Zazen sometimes there's complete merging with sound of the bird, like we actually are the sound of the bird. Very subtle types of convention coming in there. Because we're so used to it, this is how our mind operates. So conventional truth and ultimate truth. Yes? Is it kind of like language itself as an interface to this? Yeah, language seems to be a big way that we do this. Like when we say retreat hall, immediately upon that word we actually, in our mind, we actually, without any effort, we have immediate conception of an actual retreat hall.

[53:22]

Amazing. And some people say, well, what about before we learn language? Are we not actually doing this? Are we not actually constructing a world? My understanding is that we don't need actual language. I think babies, before they learn language, there's some debate about this, especially in modern psychology, and I think it's interesting to maybe discover some exact point when babies start constructing the world. My understanding from a kind of traditional Buddhist point of view is that virtually upon birth. Some people might say it's later, but, um, and I say this because these Madhyamaka Indian people, middle way philosophers say there's this innate view that thing that we're born with, that things exist in and of themselves. So I think before language it would be like a baby's first thing is it's like, you know, mommy, Or milk, right?

[54:24]

They don't have names for these. It's way before the names. But there's still some sense of like there's something other I need and want now. And I'm going to express this crying loudly. There's not like I am just the universe and like milk is flowing through everything. And nothing's lacking, and this feeling of hunger is just one with everything. I don't think they think that way. And we, you know, and I think, you know, within the first 30 seconds of their life, they're crying, right? They get hit on the butt in order to get them breathing. Do they still do this? At least this is an all-time thing, right? And you get them to cry, but they're crying because there's some pain. Anyway, I think there's this, and it's very less reified, it seems like, compared to an adult for a newborn baby.

[55:27]

So we don't know. We can't remember that far back. Some maybe subtle sense of separation around mommy. And before language, that's the point, I think. And then when words come in, I think that's when it really takes off. As soon as language arts, then boom, boom, boom, we can really reify everything instantly. You can see kids just learning language, how they're just creating a whole new world with language and words, yeah. Yeah. Distinctions, discriminations. Wow. Wow. Because they've been hearing it. Because they heard it inside. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[56:29]

And babies can't think. Apparently what babies see until a certain age is like color feels like it's not things. And people who have been blind since birth and then have an operation so that they can see don't know how to interpret the world. It's like... What are those dark things attached to everything, the shadows? Wow, yeah. Interesting, yeah, yeah. Again, amazing what the mind can do. I think that's one thing just about Buddhist practice and meditation practice. If nothing else, it really makes one appreciate how awesome it is to be a person. with the mind and be able to make a world and all that. And, you know, half a bunch of suffering is awesome that we can, we basically create that through our projections too.

[57:30]

So, yeah, it's almost like there's like, there's like, the duality is set up from birth maybe, and then there's this kind of platform ready for this language faculty, and then it's almost like, It's like a language program on a computer. It's already in there, but it's not taking up so much space. And then you kind of look, it's like a zip file or something. Then you open it up, and then you have this whole new, it takes up a lot more space on our hard drive, right, as soon as we have language. But our hard drive is very large, it seems like. Our storehouse consciousness holds a lot. Many, many lives. So, let me see what time it is. So for those who were, oh, it's 4.35. For those who have to go work at Tassahara, you're welcome to go. Yeah, I'll keep going for a little bit. I'll stop by 5.

[58:36]

For those who are hoping to to get right into Dogen. This is all just setting the foundation. It's a very short fascicle, so we can afford to do this. So now, Nagarjuna, his next chapter after the full Nobletus, the next chapter is 25, examination of Nirvana. It's like near the end of this book. Some people would say this is the culmination of his middle way verses. Some would say it's about the two truths is the culmination of chapter 24. Some would say the culmination is chapter 25 on nirvana because this is the point of it all. What is the liberation from suffering in this life? Nirvana is the goal of Buddhism. So what are we talking about here and how are we going to be free from samsara from Nagarjuna's point of view?

[59:40]

This gets... Really cool, I think. So first, in an early verse from chapter 25, verse 3, he's basically defining nirvana. And Nagarjuna says, no elimination and no attainment, no annihilation, no permanence, no cessation and no arising. This is termed nirvana. He likes to say, this is called nirvana. Because all of this is just words. But that's very much like the Heart Sutra, right? And very much like the definition of the ultimate truth. And the early definition from the Pali canon of nirvana, of, you know, the unmade, unfabricated. Again, no elimination, no attainment. No annihilation, no permanence. No cessation, no arising. This is called nirvana.

[60:44]

Or the... transcendence of suffering. Nirvana is often... Also, in the early teachings, neglected to say, but a really common definition of Nirvana, it's the end of greed, hate, and delusion. Again, it's in the negative. It's the cessation of greed, hate, and delusion. And that is the cessation of suffering. Suffering is basically greed, hate, and delusion. And the cessation of all grasping. So Nagarjuna gives this definition of nirvana and then a commentary to bring this out, which I think this is a very early Tibetan commentary, just coming from the Indian tradition. It says, for us, followers of Nagarjuna, nirvana is the absence of any elimination. So he's going to break down these words.

[61:45]

Elimination is the first one. Nirvana is no elimination. Nirvana is the absence of elimination of phenomena pertaining to afflictions. So it's not... Nirvana is not the elimination of afflictions. It's no elimination. Sorry, this is starting to sound funny. But it's not about eliminating afflictions because that's... Like, then nirvana would be something that comes at the time of eliminating afflictions. Nirvana doesn't come and go. It's already free from all afflictions. This is this kind of naturally abiding nirvana, already free from afflictions. So nirvana doesn't need to eliminate afflictions. It's no elimination. And it's no attainment. That's the result of purification.

[62:47]

Because nirvana already is. Everything is naturally in a state of nirvana. It's not something, it's not like phenomena attain this purification when they eliminate afflictions, or even that we attain this purification when we eliminate afflictions. That's how it's often thought of. But there's something more subtle here, like nirvana doesn't come and go. So it's not about eliminating something or attaining something. It involves no annihilation of a previously existing self nor any permanence in the sense of a future existence of some kind of entity. So it's not really permanent and it's not annihilation. of some self, because there isn't a self to annihilate. There is no cessation at a particular time of some essence that existed before, nor any arising of something that did not exist earlier.

[64:05]

That which is free from these six mentally constructed extremes, and the six are No elimination, no attainment, no annihilation, no permanence, no cessation, no arising. That which is free from these six mentally constructed extremes is what is termed nirvana. So arising and ceasing are actually mentally constructed extremes. You know, it's on that extreme, but they're mental constructions. Even arising. Things do not actually dependently arise. So dependent arising is actually conventional truth. It's a pretty good one. But actually in emptiness there's no arising. Ultimate truth. So sometimes people say, I've heard that actually dependent co-arising

[65:13]

is like the ultimate truth of things, that everything only arises dependent on conditions. My understanding is that's actually conventional truth. It's a kind of truth, but the ultimate truth is that nothing arises even dependently. But again, they're completely intimate. Things are only empty. Things are empty because they dependently appear to arise. They depend on other things, therefore they're not, they're empty of independence. Yeah, there's something, yeah. We talk about like, there's a dependent, this is a dependently arisen book. And even though, and it depends on, you know, Again, there's these different levels. It depends on the bookmaker and so on.

[66:15]

I think that's, in a way, not, that doesn't change us so much to see that. It depends on its parts. That's getting a little bit more radical, you know. It depends on its pages, because that's what they get into how we're constructing it as mentally constructing it. Like if you start taking out one page at a time, still a book, still a book, still a book, when you get to like, you know, maybe down to like the last few pages, Actually, it's not really a book anymore. It's like two covers with no pages. We might say, well, which page did it cease to become a book? And that just goes to show that there's probably not much agreement on which page it suddenly ceased to be a book because it's just a kind of arbitrary thing that it's a book. I think that's kind of a nice example. It's like you start adding walls and ceilings. It's not quite a building, and at some point, Some people will start to call it a building, but some people won't call it a building until it's totally finished.

[67:15]

We have all different levels because it's this kind of arbitrary conceptual imputation. But as soon as we do it and we call it a building, then it has this kind of nature of a building. We start to feel like now it really is a building, and now it really is a book. But you can see how it's a little bit arbitrary. When it becomes a book, therefore the dependently arisen book dependent on both the bookmaker on one level, on a little bit deeper level dependent on its pages of parts, and on the most deep level dependent on just the name book and that kind of like bookness of it, like this actual nature of, has like book nature. It's just a conceptual imputation. it dependently arises as a book, like that is just a conventional truth. But that very conventional truth, that it's dependent on these various conditions, is the kind of proof, in a way, that it's empty of any bookness.

[68:27]

We say empty of own being or self-nature, that means like bookness, like an essence. It's empty of the essence of it. of actual book. And, you know, as we're talking like this, our minds might start deconstructing this way in a very kind of neat way. Things become a little bit more, like, flexible and maybe it's not really as book-like, book-ness quality as I thought it had, but still somebody says, bring me the book. You know, we just, Yeah, you feel so, you know, if we're not in this mode of really concentrated on this sort of deconstructing project, we just really feel like there is some bookiness to it. Doesn't it seem that way? Seems to me like it actually has some bookiness. So many qualities, all the senses, like it's solid, it has pages, it has words, so many things.

[69:30]

It's convinced, it really has like book nature. or the essence of a book. So this is what's being refuted by these middle way people. There's no essence of bookness. So the fact that it depends on these conditions is the dependent arising. And I think it's nice to add an appearance because if we say it's actually a dependently arising book, like this thing called book really dependently arises, then we're kind of reifying it. But it's actually just an appearance. We don't want to negate the appearance of the book, but we do say it's kind of, it's a mere appearance. And we all can agree. It's a mere appearance of a book dependent on various conditions. It's a dependently arisen appearance. And I would say that's the conventional truth. If we say it's a dependently arisen real thing, that's actually like not even conventional truth. That's like a reifying. We're putting an essence back into it.

[70:31]

without even realizing it. It's a dependently arisen book. I think we often think that way when we first start hearing these teachings. It's a dependently arisen actual book. It doesn't break down our mind so much to do that, right? A little bit it does. But if we say it's a dependently arisen appearance of a book, then we say, oh, it's a temporary appearance that seems very real. It's the concealer truth. The appearance of the book conceals the ultimate truth. Can you see underneath? There's this ultimate truth of actually no essence of anything here. It's almost like all these metaphors, like a rainbow. When you go up to it, it disappears like a hologram. like a mirage, it really appears, but when you go, when you look very closely, it's actually not there.

[71:35]

You know, the metaphors, so we don't mean it like literally like the particles disintegrate into space, right? It's just that when you look really closely, it's not there in the way we thought. It's also kind of like dreamlike appearance. I was so used to constructing everything without any effort from hours old. So there's this relationship. When the conventional truth is seen to be just the conventional truth, mere appearances are seen to be just mere appearances, that's where the ultimate truth is revealed. Some might even say conventional truth Just being conventional truth without any additional essence injected in there, that is ultimate truth.

[72:35]

Conventional truth, which is just a mere appearance with no reification of it, in a way, is ultimate truth. And that's like the logic of the heart sutra. Form itself without any additional reification is emptiness. So in the same way, samsara and nirvana, and this is like, I put these verses on the bottom of this Shobogenzo fascicle. If you take it home, you can read these verses over and over. They're pretty straightforward, but it says, this is Nagarjuna, verses 19 and 20. He says, there's not the slightest difference between samsara, cyclic existence, and nirvana. There's not the slightest difference between nirvana and samsara.

[73:39]

Whatever's the limit of nirvana, that's the limit of samsara. There's not even the slightest difference between them or even the subtlest thing. Some might say this is the pinnacle of Nagarjuna's whole work and very Zen-like teaching, don't we? samsara and nirvana, there's no difference. This was like the second century in India. I think this kind of thing is the basis for a lot of Zen teachings. And it's easily misunderstood. If without understanding these two truths, you just say, hey, samsara is nirvana. So like, my delusions are already enlightenment. Cool. I don't have to do anything. I mean, in a way, that is... Very cool. And we don't have to do anything. But if we don't understand the kind of logic behind it, then it's just like license for whatever, you know. And it's not helpful. It's not liberating. So we're kind of unpacking what this means logically. Yeah. I just wanted to add that sometimes I find a little way emptiness teachings to be difficult to practice with because I can...

[74:48]

go on with the idea of nihilism. That's not Nagarjuna or Doga not proposing. And so, I mean, I think there's room for also, like, emptiness as form and maybe faith. Well, lots of room for that. There's something there. Yeah. I mean, the Heart Tutu says it, right? And again, going back to that verse about the two truths, without a foundation in the conventional truth, ultimate truth cannot be realized so they always work together and again saying the conventional truth just being the conventional truth is the ultimate truth that's a way of unifying them that's actually not nihilistic it's not like there's nothing because the convention there's the conventional truth but the conventional truth is just the conventional truth you know that's a little um the way they work together is the is the cure for nihilism. Form and emptiness, never inseparable. And two truths, never inseparable.

[75:49]

And now here, samsara and nirvana, never inseparable. So a little bit about this, which I think is along the lines of your point, too, about we don't want to fall into a nihilistic view of emptiness. This is Jay Garfield's commentary on these verses. He says, Seeing the conventional as the conventional, as was previously said, is to see it as it is ultimately. At this point, Nagarjuna makes a similar move with regard to nirvana and draws one of the most startling conclusions of these middle-wave verses. Just as there's no difference in entity between the conventional and the ultimate, because there's no difference in entity because the conventional is just empty appearances, and emptiness always takes the form of an appearance. They're both empty. There's no difference in entity between nirvana and samsara.

[76:52]

Nirvana is simply samsara seen without reification, without attachment, without delusion. The reason that we cannot say anything about nirvana as an independent, non-samsaric entity, then, is not that it is such an entity, but that it's ineffable and unknowable. Because any kind of knowing is a kind of reification. It's a kind of grasping it as some object. That's why it can't be knowable as some thing. Rather, it is because it's only samsara seen as it is. Nirvana is just samsara seen as it is. Just as emptiness is just the conventional dependent co-horizon seen as it is. You follow that? This logic of non-duality. Going back a little bit.

[77:56]

Nirvana is simply samsara seen without reification, without attachment, without delusion. And then... Rather, it's because it is only samsara seen at... Nirvana is only samsara seen as it is in reality, just as emptiness is just conventional truth seen as it is. Ultimate truth is just the conventional seen accurately as merely conventional and not reality. And samsara seen as... Samsara is a dependently arisen appearance of suffering and bondage. If we see that, that's all it is. It's not like we're really bound. If we were really bound, then we'd have to eliminate a bunch of stuff. Or maybe we couldn't even if we were really, really bound. But it's an appearance of bondage. We feel as if we're really suffering.

[79:01]

ignorant, we feel as if there's this self trapped in cyclic existence and so on, but all that is just dependent on mental imputations and so on. They hardly ever say that the two truths are dependent on each other. And you might remember that I had this email conversation with Carl Brunholtz about this question. Can you say that emptiness is dependent on the pentacle arising? Or that the ultimate truth is dependent on the conventional truth? And the problem with saying that is that then you... then you say the ultimate truth is dependent. When they usually say, ultimate truth doesn't depend on anything.

[80:05]

It's always the case. It doesn't come and go. If it's dependent, then it's something that comes and goes. So there's some subtlety here. Yeah, I think we could say from the ultimate point, samsara, just seen as a mere appearance without any reification, that non-reification is the ultimate truth, and non-reification is nirvana. Yeah, you could say, we have a conventional truth that nirvana is something very difficult. We might have that. We might have a different conventional truth after this discussion than we did before. Nirvana is this distant goal. But I think this ties very much into Zen practice where we say, even to say things like, just be yourself completely, for example. Maybe, I don't know if this would be Suzuki Roshi's commentary on Nagarjuna, but if you understand it in this way of like, be yourself completely means let yourself be this mere appearance of this person and don't try to fix yourself in any way because it's just an appearance anyway.

[81:23]

Then you, right there, you be yourself completely without a little, well, but I should fix it a little bit, you know. If we even get into that, we're reifying it, right, to think that. So just totally relax into this, this like, this awkward appearance of what we call a person. Completely to the very bottom, that emptiness is right there, that freedom is right there. You could hear that teaching. in that way. But again, I think it starts to get a little dangerous. Be yourself means, well, that means I can just hurt you because that's what I feel like doing now. That would be a sort of nihilistic interpretation. But in fact, I think that's reification. My understanding of be yourself completely, which Suzuki Roshi likes to say, is like, Completely means without any reification of like, I'm just myself and I am really this way.

[82:26]

That's kind of like, that's more than completely. It's too much. It's like adding something. But really being yourself is like I'm not adding or subtracting anything. I'm just like this, I'm just this dependent arising being. I don't even know who I am moment to moment, but I'm not nothing. It's kind of awkward to be in this body and mind, but I'm not going to resist it or grasp it. Again, I think just being ourselves without grasping ourselves, which means reifying. It's not just conventional appearance of me. I exist. That's the big one that we reify, I think, is me. The body, mind, and me. I'll just finish with this. Little bit of more of this commentary to finish, Jay Garfield's commentary on his verses. To be in samsara is to see things as they appear to diluted consciousness and to interact with them accordingly.

[83:33]

To be in nirvana, then, is to see those same things as they are, as merely empty, dependent, impermanent, non-substantial, but not to be somewhere else seeing something else. Another way of distinguishing between samsara and nirvana is to think of them as somehow different places, like heaven and earth are often conceived in Western religious traditions, and then to think that upon attaining nirvana, one leaves this place, disappears, and goes there to nirvana. Of course, if one thinks at all, oh, well, let's see, But Nagarjuna is emphasizing that nirvana is not someplace else. It's a way of being here. Emptiness is only the emptiness of all entities and ultimate truth is merely the essenceless essence of those conventional things.

[84:36]

So nirvana is only samsara experienced as a Buddha experiences it. You can start to see the union of samsara and nirvana like this. So that's the basis now. Tomorrow we can jump into Dogen and some other Zen people talking about their way of expressing this. Thank you for your attention to this difficult to talk about matter. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[85:36]

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