I have this watch I was given as a gift from some people that I performed the wedding ceremony for, and it has past, future, and present. And with some numbers in there to try to figure out what the present means, but I may need a little help if it gets to be, if there's a need for exactitude. It is the present, however. So, hello. What a warm, warm night. I hope this doesn't mean that we're entering a hell realm. But on the other hand, I kind of hope it means that too. I think you'll see what I mean as the talk goes on. I was reading a book. by Lama Surya Das called Buddha Is As Buddha Does.

[01:25]

And he described the world in a way that seemed quite accurate to me. See what you think. He said, the world is a pressure cooker that pushes us to relentlessly stay self-focused, cocooned, and defensive. We are told to fear outsiders, worry about appearances, look good, and accumulate as much wealth and security as we can. So if you think that that might be true, and I think it's a pretty accurate view of the realm of suffering, and that that pain actually permeates, and you try many, many, many things to work with that pain and nothing quite works, maybe at that point we say to ourselves, does this have to be this way?

[02:29]

And then maybe we say, is there an end to suffering? And then maybe we hear about Zen. Through a friend, we get a recommendation, or through the kind of impersonal but... I would say, what was the word I came up with? I really liked it. Algorithmically wise internet. Right? It can bring us to Zen or to Zen center. And we stumble in here with that question. Does it have to be this way? And is there an end to it? And we come because we hear Zen Center is a training place. It's a place to train in compassionate practices. And it's based on revolutionary insights.

[03:35]

And also there's a community of supportive teachers and fellow practitioners all dedicated to this question. Does it have to be this way? Is there an end to it? That's two questions. And so through this entering, these questions, this bit of freedom around the questions, enough at least to see it, we're encouraged to either enter the path or I like to think of it as we're encouraged to see how we're already on the path. And we've never really been away from it. Now, I'm saying this because this is the beginning of practice period and I know it's a time to renew intentions. Some people have come from far to join this study. Some people just turn around right where they are and go deeper in that same place.

[04:40]

Being on the path does not mean that we're far from our habitual minds. These minds are forever looking to stabilize our life in an attempt to either minimize or erase the causes of pain or permanently establish what's pleasurable. Ironically, when we go into the zendo to stabilize and sit down, we discover that everything changes all the time. So, Lama Suryodas goes on to say, When we, he says, take the path, but again I say when we realize we're already on the path, we enter into an especially challenging kind of self-training. We commit ourselves to work not just towards self-improvement, but towards transcending the whole notion of self and selfishness.

[05:50]

This endeavor goes against the grain of every self-help program our culture has conditioned us to seek. Being a bodhisattva means letting go of the desires, of all desires, as we turn our focus instead in the opposite direction. And we do this out of a sense of shared responsibility for the end of suffering. Someone said the practice of Buddhism is like swimming upstream. transcending the notion of selfishness. So now this practice period has begun, and there are the teachings of the six paramitas that are being offered. And we could ask ourselves, are we engaging in this path for some kind of personal achievement or self-improvement?

[06:53]

Or to study and realize the practice of the six paramitas, in order to fulfill the bodhisattva vow to liberate all beings, including ourselves. Is that the order? Is it our self first? Or is it all beings, and by the way, including us? In recent times, and I don't want to quantify that, I don't know if it's for the past three years or five years or ten years, there's been a wholesome intention arising here at Zen Center and at places in the West to extend the Zen teaching and all the benefits of Zazen to more and more people. And in order to make this more palatable and possible, we sometimes clothe this ancient practice in blue jeans and Nikes.

[07:57]

sneaking it into the medical system as stress reduction so as not to scare the horses. There are other attempts to make it more accessible by mixing with psychology or mixing Zen with Vipassana or Vipassana with Zen, but mixing. Recently in Tricycle Magazine there was a question put out to various teachers What is it that you've changed your mind about in Buddhism? And Robert Aiken said, he says in part, this is an excerpt, he's changed his mind about how the Dharma should be presented. And then he goes on to talk about his great respect for and how well he relates to people like Meister Eckhart and Brother Lawrence, and he didn't say Brother David, but even with that, he doesn't feel the resonance. with the power of the emptiness teachings.

[08:59]

And he can't get past the purpose of psychological therapy to enhance the ego. He says that we're making Dharma complicated beyond recognition in the effort to make it new. And I would say accessible. I'm interested in this word because this is something that some of the officers at Zen Center are really, you know, using this word, making the Dharma more accessible. And I appreciate the effort and I feel quite good about it. But there's a shadow side, which I've been sort of pulled to investigate. And that's partly what this talk is looking at tonight. So in making the Dharma more accessible, are we forgetting to mention that we're what we're actually talking about in terms of transcendence, while including, you know, the stress reduction and all of those elements are wonderful and wholesome and helpful.

[10:05]

But do we forget to mention this other aspect? And the Buddha said there are three characteristics of this human life, right? Impermanence, dukkha or dissatisfaction, and emptiness. So are we avoiding a discussion of emptiness? Or another way of calling it is lack of own being, which is a way I've grown to work with it. Or are we just doing something else? And there's a great admonition by our ancestor Nagarjuna, who says in the fundamental verses of the Middle Way, he says, without a foundation in the conventional truth, the significance of the ultimate cannot be taught. And then he says, without understanding of the significance of the ultimate, liberation is not achieved.

[11:08]

So there's the bind. There's the bind. We need to be really careful when we talk about emptiness. But if we don't, We haven't gone all the way through. So I've been thinking and getting anxious about whether or even if or when to bring this up. But I thought, is it okay with you if I talk about emptiness a little bit? I just want to check. Feb told me I needed to check. Not that I'm going to be able to, by the way. But let's see. We'll do a little dancing. Okay? Now, Jordan gave me a segue in his talk on Saturday.

[12:12]

I was listening really hard to see what he was going to say. And he did mention the two truths. He said those words. He stopped there, but he did bring them up. So the door got opened. And these two truths or another way of talking about them are conventional truth and ultimate truth. Conventional truth being the way we understand things in order to live our lives. And, you know, in a wholesome or unwholesome way, there's no value judgment in conventional truth. It's just the conventionally accepted way of living our lives and seeing ourselves as separate. and improvable, by the way. The ultimate truth is a way of studying how things actually are above, below, around our delusion of the way things are. And both of them are truths.

[13:13]

Now, I care about this I care about talking about this or even bringing it up a little because I want to remind myself that Zen practice is dangerous and difficult. And that it's not only about being relaxed or improved. It's about being awake, [...] awake. And what is said to be a major factor, a major contribution to this awakening is the study and realization of emptiness. So this both spurs me on and gives me pause, a little stop start in this process. Maybe it's easier to just study the Paramitas as a self-improvement course.

[14:19]

I'm going to keep going in this other direction until you stop me. Put your hand up if you want me to stop. So the question is, how do we know if we're grounded enough in the conventional to be able to open this door and peek in, peek around? Is it a door? Probably not, but that's a good metaphor to start with. I just read here, I want to post the warning that in entering Zen Center and Zen practice, we've come in a door from which there's no way to get out alive. So the problem with self-improvement practice, gaming practice, when we're talking about emptiness, is that in the practice of emptiness, you're not there to receive the award. I also want to mention, as we tiptoe around this territory, that it was Avlokiteshvara when deeply practicing Prajnaparamita who saw that all five skandhas were empty and thus relieved all suffering.

[15:48]

Avlokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of great compassion. This is an instruction, I think, to us of how to enter this conversation, investigation, realization of the deep turning of our lives. We do it with great compassion, and I think we do it for others. That's a further paragraph down here, but it looks like I got here sooner than I thought. If we I shall wait, because that has to do with an example I want to give you, and I haven't gotten there yet. So another thing Jordan gave us in his talk on Saturday was a little bit of a pathway into this discussion, besides mentioning the two truths. He talked about the first parameda of giving, of dana, being actually another definition being relinquishment.

[16:51]

So he said, he quoted from the... from the koan that says all paramitas proceed from dana paramita. Relinquishment. What is this relinquishment? And I believe the koan goes on to say, in other words, it's the relinquishment of the dualism of opposites, of the ideas of good and bad, of being and non-being, void and non-void, pure and impure, self and other. This relinquishment, when it's total, is self-forgetting. It's dropping away body and mind, Dogen's request. And when this relinquishment is realized, any residue of self-centered conduct or speech or thought is wiped away endlessly.

[17:54]

There was something... something that Ekin Roshi wrote, and I like that. That feels amazing to me. It's wiped away endlessly. So this emptiness teaching that we're talking about is related to the study of the sixth paramita, the paramita of wisdom. Talking about it as an emptiness teaching, we're talking about the ultimate meaning of prajna paramita, the paramita of wisdom. the perfection of wisdom. So how to approach this relinquishment? Well, I propose one way to think about it is wherever we are, we let go. We don't have to be any place special. We let go right now. Now, when I bring that up, I say let go.

[19:00]

It's possible that some ones of you are picturing a kind of a place where you're holding. You don't want to let go. So the request to consider letting go highlights the place of holding. It brings it up into view. Let go. And what do you see? Well, maybe not let go that way. And what's that? So this is a helpful instruction, I think, to see where the holding is. Now, this request to let go and the possible view of where we're holding is one way of looking at it is as if we're standing on the top of a hundred foot pole. we're asked to let go and we feel the holding and we look down and we see lions and tigers and bears oh my all of the embodiments of our fears the menagerie of our concerns which brings me to i want to bring up this koan about standing on the top of a hundred foot pole and i want to talk about it in a way

[20:25]

that it's not usually spoken of. It's a story that's in two different koan collections. It's in the Book of Serenity and it's in the Gateless Gate collection of koans. And in the Book of Serenity, it's quite an extended koan where there's a back and a forth and someone asking a teacher and then getting a response and going back and getting another response in many verses, et cetera. In the Gateless Gate, The entire koan is the question, how do you step from the top of a 100-foot pole? Traditionally, investigating this koan is a matter of thinking of the 100-foot pole as being at the top of the 100-foot pole of being stuck in an enlightenment state, sort of Zen sickness, holding on to emptiness, and then being requested to consider stepping off the pole.

[21:34]

But I'm going to talk about it in terms of just any place we're stuck. It doesn't have to be that we're stuck in enlightenment. Matter of fact, we could be stuck in delusion. And standing on the top of the pole could be a request, and sort of considering stepping off could be a request to step into the emptiness teachings. So Wu Min, in part of his commentary on this shorter version of the koan, says, stepping forward, turning back, is there anything to reject as ignoble or worthy? Be that as it may, how do you step from the top of a hundred foot pole?

[22:37]

And he yells, I So in the koan, part of the verse says, having a clear view of the void, don't make your home there. But I say, having a clear view of the world, don't make your home there. Dwelling in the world of right and wrong, good and bad. Improvement. Don't forget to engage with the top of the pole. Now, admitting we're stuck is a way of stepping off.

[23:43]

Where does the courage come from? Courage or encouragement come from? This is what I was going to talk about earlier. If we're asked to let go of the hold of where we are in order to gain something, we can't. Because we're afraid if we jump off, we're going to die and we won't be there to receive the reward. So we're stuck. However, if we're asked to let go in order to fulfill our vow, it's possible that our Love for self-continuance will vanish. And as we fall, we won't even see the pole or the abyss because we are avlokiteshvara responding to the cries of the world. We can do it for our vow. Actually, we can't do it. But that's a conventional way of talking about what happens.

[24:45]

Together, this occurs. Together, the response comes through our bodies and our minds. Dogen talks about this koan in the Zvi Monki. A couple of times he does. And in this one section he says, at the top of a hundred foot pole, how do you advance one step forward? His way of wording the koan or the translator's way. In such a situation, Dogen says, we think that we would die if we were to let go of the pole. So we cling firmly to it. Saying advance one step further means the same thing as having resolved that death could not be bad and therefore one lets go. And Suzuki Roshi gave a couple of lectures on this koan.

[25:47]

also which we have transcripts for. And I'll read you a little bit of what he says about this koan. This was given in April of 1969. He says, if you stay on the top of the pole, you have a problem. But actually, he says, there is no pole. I think he probably laughed at that point. I am. And there's no top of the pole. Because actually, he says, the pull is continued, you know, endlessly, forever. You cannot stop there, actually. Things are continuously growing or changing into something else. And actually, you cannot jump off where you are. It's not possible. You should forget this moment and you should grow into the next. I find that so encouraging. And actually, in his talk, he says this part about there is no pole at the very beginning of the talk.

[26:53]

It's almost like if you heard that, you could have gotten up on the left at that point. But, you know, people want to hear more, right? So he keeps talking and keeps talking, but he tells you right up front. Now, it's not like the pole is annihilated. So my feeling is that once, if we can grasp, realize, not grasp actually, but realize the truth beyond logic, beyond dualistic thinking and the material world, then it's easy to step off. Suzuki Roshi in that same talk goes on to say, is it difficult to climb to the top? Or is it difficult to jump off? And then he says, thinking about the answer is what's difficult.

[27:55]

Because we're trying to grasp, aren't we? Trying to see what that is. And he says near the end of that talk, after you jump off from the pole, you start real practice. Now, this is a famous story. Many of you have heard this before. I think this might be a moment to tell it about Suzuki Roshi down at the Narrows at Tassahara. And there were a lot of Zen students. It was a hot summer day, and they were jumping into the pools around the Narrows. And Suzuki Roshi was watching them and decided it looked like a good thing to do. It looked like fun. And so he jumped in. forgetting that he didn't know how to swim. So he slowly sank to the bottom. And he said, I wasn't there, but I've read that he said, he was looking it up at all the pretty lady's legs that were kind of kicking above him.

[29:07]

And perhaps some of his students were thinking, well, this is a wonderful, you know, Zen kind of yogic thing. trick he's doing, he's staying down there really long, holding his breath, and then it occurred to some people, I think, that perhaps maybe this wasn't so voluntary, and then they went down and got him and brought him up. And I think what he said in the talk the next night, in the zendo, or the next morning, that he realized now that he really needed to start practicing. So he jumped onto the pole or into the pool or off of the pole or into the pond, or I don't know what he did, but the end result was he really needed to start practicing. So for me, in studying this, I see, I think, it's helpful for me to think that

[30:13]

The top of the pole is any time we think we know something. And totally being present to that is jumping off. Because the idea of the top of the pole is already holding, just the idea that there is a top. We're keeping the top of the pole from changing by calling it the top of the pole. The top is kind of juicy. It's a juicy place. There's dynamic tension there. And as long as we're in the world of dualism, where there's a top and a bottom and there's jumping and not jumping, we're stuck. We're in a juicy place. As Suzuki Roshi says, we can't jump from where we are. So... To end this, I just offer these words.

[31:39]

To see things as they are is prajna. To jump off the top of the pole when there is no pole is prajna paramita. Without worry about our body or our life, our whole life, becomes the hands and eyes of Aplokiteshvara. So thank you very much for studying this with me. Thank you. Thank you.

[32:38]

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