among cast zen master right hi
by what means can the gateway of our school be entered
why i said by means of the dunlop army meta
donna is usually translated as generosity or giving
amongst said according to the buddha the body sought the path comprises six power meters why have you mentioned only one
please explain why this one alone provides a sufficient means for us to enter
why i said deluded people fail to understand that the other five all proceed from the donna parameter
and the by its practice alone all others are fulfilled
the monk asked
why is it called the donna parameter
why i said donna means relinquishment
when the monk asked
relinquishment of what
why i said
relinquishment of the dualism of opposites which means relinquishment of ideas as to the dual nature of good and bad being and non-being void and non void pure and impure and so on
so i thought a bit quite a bit about what i wanted to talk about tonight and
each thing i thought out by decided you already knew
and
you know i thought well you've been encouraged to sit zazen already and you heard about the precepts
you've been told to see your practice leaders and to do your house jobs
to get some exercise right
that's about it
and then i thought well if they're anything like me maybe they're looking for something more
some turning phrase or some pointer
or maybe some great spiritual teacher
like suzuki roshi
who can help us to clarify our understanding
and to help take us deeper than this kind of relentless appearance of things
so i came across a teaching in my notebook that i'd written recently but i'd also written in many times over the years and never really seemed very interesting before and then this time when i came across it i've got now this is interesting
this is useful to me
and in this teaching i thought i would share with you this evening
and it's called the three levels of learning or inside
and
the reason i found this interesting because it seemed to help unjust help to explain to me why i'm so frustrated at my practice in a horse where's the frustration
i'm i think i'm working i think i am
the longing
so the first level is called knowledge based on listening
and basically at this point in your practice your you're hearing for the first time the teaching
it's called the senior should to my prize now at the wisdom based on listening
and at this stage basically your sensory apparatus is coming together with the dharma
and you see the forms you hear the teaching you smell the incense and taste the food and you gather your mind and meditation
so you can think of this stage kind of like a giant receiver
and the dharma is being transmitted continuously toward this receiver
all day long twenty four hours a day so free service
and you can't turn it off
and the rocks and trees and pebbles all proclaim the dharma just for you
so the next type of learning is called the learning that comes from study and reflection
and in this stage you take what you've heard and you start to work on it
and i was thinking this is something like the process of a photography where gobs of material are accumulated on this very sensitive and on this way sims sensitive substance of ourselves and then we take this
substance and we put it in a dark room and immersive and a chemical bath
maybe we could think that this is psychosis and practice
and then we leave it there for a while to cook
and at first i think it's kind of discouraging because all the sheets are blank
but then little by little over time the images start to darken and deepen
so this is the stage of ah gentleman approach now learning that comes from study and reflection
i think what's interesting about this process that i'm trying to learn myself
is that even though all of us receive more or less the same information and sometimes even at the same time like tonight you know you're all sitting here listening to me
each of us has a totally unique way of working with the material just as each of us is unique
so there's this little statue of the buddha that maybe you saw on buddha's birthday
the one you pour the water on and he's got one hand up in the air and another one to grow any sane i alone in the world honored one
as gonna kid
when i first heard about that if it was kinda strange you know what a strange thing for the spiritual leader to be proclaiming at birth i alone in the world nominate one you
but i think this is really the case for each of us and i alone am the only one who can understand as teaching
each of you alone
is the only one who can understand and do this work no one can do it for you
there's an old saying that this lineage of but as analysis is will die with this blind ass
it's a pity
so i'm but the thing that's the good news at this point is that his first two stages the stage of listening in the stage of study are things we can do we can actually endeavor make an effort to do
i think all of you are doing just that
and
little by little through this process of devotion to study and to listening
this transformation
a curse and a genuine work of art
ha appears and it's none other than you yourself just as you are
without any elaborations
paul tesco said one time one the word old friends and teachers that it's not what you came here to get but what you came here to lose
now the thing about this third stage which is called the boven my impression of the wisdom that comes from actually becoming the teaching is no longer something that you're working on or listening to but you've become the teacher
when the student is ready a teacher appears
nine out of this l chemical bath
there you are just as your
but this is the stage that you can't do
it's a kind of grace or gift that comes so you don't need to worry about it secure she said don't pay too much attention
to the true dragon
just the dragon carving that's the first two stages is called carving the dragon
just keep dragon dragon carving and be happy in your work and maybe the true dragon will come
there's a story about a man who loved dragons and he spent all day long curving dragons
and he had a house full of dragons he had dragon potholders and dragon and no curtains and
ah and one day the true dragon flew by overhead and he saw this man's house make that will he must really love dragons he probably love to make me so the dragon flew down and course the man went screaming from his house
so true dragon we can't own or possess it's not something that we can make out of ourselves or about out of anything else it's not something for us to to to claim that we can love it and we can
we endeavored to
fully express
ourselves in our lives

so these stages that i just mentioned these three stages of learning arm don't know if it's useful to you are encouraging or whatever but i found them to help with that understanding my own frustrations the i'll just be patient just a little dragon cargo i can
do that
that's enough
so i'm
what i'd like to talk about tonight to offer is something maybe they should been here for the first time or maybe you've heard before but something that certainly i'm working on
i'm trying to understand is the teaching of non duality
and i propose that without an understanding of non-duality that you can't practice the buddhist path
when it's a primary
i'm robert akin roshi in a footnote to the general corn
defines or describes the world as seen by an awakened one in this way
he says that it is the dependent core arising or the interdependence of sentient beings and all things has seen through the eyes of non-duality
so the enter interdependence or the dependent core arising of all things as seen through the eyes of non-duality so these are good as big fat eyes that's what he's talking about
non duality
her important
so i've been looking for these teachings of non-duality pretty actively lately and very interested in ha
this study for myself
and they appear once you start looking for something i don't know how that is but once you start looking for something than that it's everywhere here so these these are kind of nested like little colored easter eggs throughout the buddhist scriptures and i was very happy to find but i think of her say teaching him
sermon that the buddha gave a following his enlightenment
so this is an ancient story and it takes place right after the buddha has become enlightened and what he's been doing with his time following that great event ah is enjoying himself
he's been going from one tree species to another and sitting in meditation
feeling the pleasure of deliverance
and that would have been the end of his story
except that ah lord brahma saw that the buddha had no intention of teaching what he had learned and he came to him and begged him to please teach what he knew and he said to the buddha lord buddha the world will be lost
the world will be utterly lost if the mind of the perfect one accomplished and fully enlightened favors inaction and does not teach the law
so even though the buddha was reluctant to teach because he thought it was too complicated and people would be confused and they wouldn't understand
he agreed to try so he went and found his five old companions the five ascetics who were pretty down on him because he had abandoned asceticism
and
as he approached them even though they didn't they'd agreed among themselves not to greet him they found themselves ah
in his presence to be very drawn to the change in their old friend
so they asked him to please teach them what what he had learned
and
to me this point of contact between the buddha and his old friends is the most important thing that happened and the last two thousand years
the entire history of buddhism depends on what happened on that day
and all of us can be personally grateful for
this encounter
and it was foot during the good as very first sermon which is called setting rolling the wheel of the law bad shakyamuni buddha taught the path of awakening to someone else
so this is the point of contact and without that there is no buddhism there is no teaching there is no dharma there's no sanga
this is the most important moment for us
and it's also the moment where there was hope and were there was the possibility that this matter can be learned
people's faculties may be cane or doll but in the path or are no southern or northern ancestors know this teaching as a universal for everyone not just for some kind of spiritual athlete or hero
and it's all about these three levels of learning
hearing studying becoming
so this is what the buddha said in his first lecture he said big shoes monks there are these two extremes that ought not to be cultivated by one who has gone forth
what to
there is devotion to pursuit of pleasure and sensual desires which is low course vulgar ignoble and harmful and there his devotion to self mortification which is painful ignoble and harmful the middle way discovered
by a perfect one avoids both of these extremes
it gives vision gives knowledge and leads to peace to direct knowledge to enlightenment to nirvana
so right here in the very first two sentences of the very first lecture of the buddha is the teaching of non-duality avoid the extremes
two things the boy the extremes and find the middle way between the extremes
so i was thinking that it probably has a lot to do with the way were built that we have this talent for ah creating pairs of opposites you know what kind of mirror people these two sides
which look very much alike
and how are you gonna tell them apart him well we'll call this the right and this the left
what's this is good idea but you know then we kinda got carried away cylinders good and evil right and wrong light and dark everything's in pairs
my interesting
and i thought well i wonder how it might have been if we were shaped like jellyfish in our wasters or something maybe it would have been a different time for us
but here we have the two things
so
an understanding are looking for these colored eggs that i'm calling the teachings of non-duality ah it's very you'll see a lot of pairs been ah
rectified by the teachers and in the in the sutras and so on but the the primal pair the kind of prototypical pair of two things as is and isn't
is and isn't and for us it gets more personal if we say birth and death
dead or alive
isn't isn't
and i think death is one of these sets of one half of a pair that guy gets a reaction from us pretty easily and pretty early my daughter's not yet five years old and she's asked me many times but what it is to die but it was gonna
happen am i going to die and where will i go when i die
shiva plays this game than i'm not real crazy about call pretend i'm dead
she lays down and doesn't move until i pretend i'm grieving and then she jumps up kiss me a hug
since it's not my favorite game
but i'm i'm willing to admit that i'm not ready to die
and my fiftieth birthday which was last man on february never that one
one of my friends make safco added green gulch said he came into my house and he whispered in one ear even the wild kinds on the hillside and then he whispered in this year
wish to live forever
and we both smiled

so ready or not
ah i am willing to study the matter of birth and death and i am willing to try to understand ah this
this question or this matter of the two things
and so i was thinking about an image came to mind for me of the two things and i thought about a sailing ship and growing a big say all kinds sailing ship as sales in and i was thinking that term
a sailing ship is actually built in an harbor and it spelt straight up and down in the vertical to the horizontal
but it can't sail that way
in order to sail it has to move back and forth and response to the conditions the storms and to the sailors and so on
direction that it's trying to go
and i think of this process of understanding the darwin damaged the same way if there is no set position called the truth
but there's this effort to understand to write our views the first of the eightfold path is called the right view and i actually prefer to say writing views writing is this dynamic
if you try to find a truth that holds for all time you're probably leaning into one of these two things
it makes it hard to move
so
i found a very nice quote by suzuki roshi to back me up i hope it may be enlightenment but it's not always so an enlightened person does not ignore things and does not stick to things they don't stick to the truth either
there is no truth that is different from each being being itself was the truth
so i have come to appreciate this reconciliation of the economy's as the primary art form of the great buddhist teachers
a very good at helping people to get unstuck from lopsided views
and i have a very favorite story ah between shakyamuni buddha
but first great master of the form and a man called the kanaka who was a very famous skeptic of his day
and deca naka comes to the border and he says my theory and my view is this master gotama i have no liking for any theory or view
pretty good sounds like to thing doesn't sound like he's gotta balance their limit than the buddha says
this view of yours i have no liking for views have you know liking for that too

can get it
really
i like the buddha says by insisting on views either liking or disliking you run into the risk of clashing with those who hold differing views rather is a clash their quarrels whether our quarrels there is harm when one sees that
they abandoned views without clinging to some other that is how views are abandoned and relinquished
so the main point here is not whether you're right or wrong but are you harming people it jumps over the right and wrong altogether is this helping anybody is this good for anybody is as kind or generous sweet it just right
that's that's so interesting and the buddha dharma being right is wrong
and writing views is also mirrored in our practice of zazen you know we rock back and forth looking for that balance point between the extremes and then you find this place which is very dynamic
right in the center there
what's interesting is that no matter how deeply you settled into that place
and you're sitting it it's only temporary
are there times when it to the so sweet and very still require in on them that dawn rings the bell
i know and you have to get up walk around talk to your friends
so this writing views is something that we do over and over and over again it's her practice to find a way to stay in relation to things and a balanced way we don't want to freeze don't want to find some kind of stone person that doesn't
doesn't know how to breathe

so among the other great teachers of the year
dharma the many many great teachers nygaard you know we chant his name in the morning gershon is stands out so far above the rest that he's called the second buddha
it's pretty good
second buddha
and he arrived at the summit of his spiritual journey and was actually able to talk from there
in these short ic breaths
and i have recently fallen madly in love with nagarajan and i decided that it's the closest i can get to understanding him
don't i just love him i'm devoted to him i like endeavoring to grapple with his teaching
in his treatise on the middle way he begins with obeisance to the perfect buddha the best to proponents who teaches that what dependently arises has no cessation no production know annihilation no permanence know going no coming know
no difference no sameness pacified of elaborations at peace
so my my the image i got in studying the guardian recently was like he uses his reputation as process of refutation of no no no to drive you down deeper and deeper into the depths of isn't of death of a nice
elation and now now whatever you pull out peace in now and then when you get down there so far it's like a great whale you know you just turn around and head for the air a great whale of life the great wheel of his breaks for the surface
so to me this response to this teaching is of affirmation of the living being near strike though the cry of the newborn the will outlet breaking out of its shell
that's the answer to our friend and a gardener now not now but whose ask him whose me on such a passionate teacher
passionate tissue
the danger of this teaching of course the snake negative teaching is that maybe you won't come to life maybe you get stuck in emptiness and know
you won't break for the surface sir real danger it happens to people
the guards guardian a warns emptiness is severance and freedom from all views but it is very difficult to save those who engender views about emptiness
a scissor a sword two edged sword can cut the person who is wielding it
to be very careful
dead man walking
so i've decided that at this point in my lifetime
just as likely to die from heart failure or cancer or something so i might as well get close to the gardener
when i die from something a dharma death
and i would like to ask you out please her if you noticed me sailing off in some weird direction to please don't hesitate to correct my orientation i certainly will try to do same for you
whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that her own mind neither exists nor doesn't exist mortals keep creating the mind claiming it exists and our hearts keep negating the mind claiming it doesn't exist but bodhisattva
as and buddha's neither create more negate the mind this is what is meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist the mind that neither exists nor doesn't exist is called the middle way
so i'm an ending and i will just like to encourage you to take up the hunt for these little easter eggs of non-duality
and see if you can develop an an ear for whether it's in a lecture or something you're reading can you begin to spot this reconciliation of dichotomy is
an can you begin to learn the pattern or the the practice of finding the missing piece what are you leaving out
even more fruitful would be to find the ways that your own thinking gets stuck in some particular slant or bias
and what's really amazing about fight noticing that that's happening is that as soon as you find it is a way in which you're stuck thinking sense to roll
kitson some free him
so i wanted to
to a little nightcap which is a reading short visual reading from
i was warned that you want this is kinda late though i don't wanna keep your pet
i wanted to reach you just a little bit from the vimalakirti sutra women acuity was a famous lay personally dressed very nicely and had lots of beautiful things in his home
the wife and children saw and he is famous because here he bested all of the great disciples body suffers in the monks dharma combat
so there is it as sutra the holy teaching of emily care team
which has called the jewel of the mahayana sutras
and it's really fun to read i don't know if any of you have had a chance to
pick this up i particularly like robert thurman uma thurman spot i particularly like his translation because it's very lively just like robert is and his daughter as well and simon are you just a little bit from chapter nine which has actually called ah
the diamond door of non-duality
and the alternate name of this sutra apparently according to robert thurman was the reconciliation of the economy's so this entire sutras is devoted to non-duality
so in this chapter ah
of the disciples in the body officer kind of smarting from their encounters with family charity who always kind of leaves them tongue-tied and they're very smart devoted practitioners they're all quite good at understanding the dharma but vimalakirti is just a little better
so in this chapter vimalakirti has asked the body software's a question he says good sirs conserves it is sir cyclic please explain how the body sought for as enter the dharma door of non-duality so that each of them their thirty responses by the body surface the they're all fair
early short i'm not going to read them all but i'll read one ah
in each of them expresses their understanding of how to reconcile the two things were different some of them are like there's defilement and purification there's i and mine are self and selfless
gasping a non grasping some all of these are are taken up by one of the body surface so i'll just read the one on defilement and purification the body sought for she could have declared defilement and purification are to when there is thorough knowledge of defilement there will be no concede
ain't about purification the path leading to the complete conquest of all conceit is the entrance into non-duality
so after all of these police officers have express themselves than they turn to their crown prince
who's manjushri under she's is the police who sits on the altar in the zendo one with the sword
cutting things into one
someone they say to manjushri manjushri what is the body south as entrance into non duality a manjushri replies good sirs you have all spoken well nevertheless all your explanations are themselves dualistic to know no one teaching to express nothing
thing to say nothing to explain nothing to announce nothing to indicate nothing and to designate nothing that is the entrance into non-duality
then the crown prince manjushri said to the hiv imola security we have all given our own teachings noble sir now may you elucidate the teaching of the entrance into the principle of non duality
thereupon the law tavi vimalakirti kept his silence saying nothing at all
the crown prince manjushri applauded the law charming imola qt excellent excellent noble sir this is indeed the entrance into the non duality of the body sought was here there is no use for syllables sounds and ninety years when these teachings had been declared five
five thousand body soft entered the door of the dharma of non-duality and attained tolerance of the breathlessness of things

where i was going to end right there i thought that would be nice just to be quiet and be champions but then i turned the page
and i read the first sentence
here it is thereupon is the next chapter thereupon the venerable shy putra thought to himself if these great body as did not adjourn before noon time when are they going to eat

so on that note that you can sleep
thank you very much
me
the chair
be