Good morning. I woke up so happy this morning. I'd had a dream about me and Leslie. And we were standing laughing because we'd just been told that we were being assigned to the garden at Green Gulch. And we said, oh, we get to wear work clothes and get dirty and go late to lunch. Anyway, we were very, very happy. I did wake up. Anyway. So yesterday, so to speak, I talked about the years leading up to the Buddha's enlightenment. about his home leaving, his mastery of the jhanas, the meditation trances, and his great effort through austerities to break the bondage of his body and his feelings, particularly lustful feelings and hateful feelings.

[01:07]

And then finally, exhausted and not very well, he remembered this meditation that he'd experienced as a young boy called the Rose Apple Meditation. Some of you may know about that story, but I think it's really interesting in thinking back on ourselves as children. I think all of us have had the rose apple meditation when we're children. Some time when we've just been so content, you know, lying on our back, looking at the clouds or whatever it was, we know that place in our own feelings and our own minds. It's very content. The occasion when he had this experience was an agricultural festival. His father, being the king, had invited all of the villagers from the surrounding area to come and celebrate the harvest. Actually, it was the first plow, beginning of the harvest, the growing season. And so they came with their oxen and their servants, and they were having various kinds of races.

[02:14]

Fights were breaking out, there was bedding going on, and everyone was drinking and having a good time, except for the young prince, who was really horrified. What he saw, looking at the same things that everyone else saw, was the oxen being whipped. He saw the ground being torn up and the little animals running for their lives and big birds coming down and swooping them up. And he saw people fighting and he saw them unhappy and intoxicated and so on. And he didn't think it was a happy thing at all. Quite the opposite. So he slipped away from his family and he went and sat under this rose apple tree. And that's when, without doing anything, he just all of a sudden found himself in a very peaceful state. So this is what he reflected on as an older... Man, now he's in his 30s, is sitting out in the forest trying to figure out how to find his way out of this entrapment, pain and suffering.

[03:20]

And then he thought, why am I so afraid of such happiness and pleasure that has nothing to do with pure lust for unprofitable things? Suppose I eat some solid food, some boiled rice and some bread, and a medicine bowl. So it took a while, but eventually he regained his strength and his good health. And at that very time that he did, his companions, the five ascetics, left him, saying that he had reverted to luxury and was no longer interested in finding the path to liberation. I think it's also important for us to think about the context in which he was searching for freedom. At that time in India, the main understanding of a spiritual quest was that you were endeavoring to unite your soul with Brahma so that by loosening the hold that the body has on the soul, that the soul could basically fly out and become one with the cosmos and no longer be reborn.

[04:25]

You wouldn't have to come back to this horrible world where there's so much suffering and illness and where the only outcome is going to be that you're going to die again and again and again. So they did have an understanding of rebirth, but it wasn't desirable. You know, they wanted out of the rounds of rebirth. So that's what these young people were endeavoring to do, was to free themselves from the rounds of coming back to life. And so, you know, he basically is being told, well, you've given up. You know, you're just no longer one of us. So in this, the recounting of the Buddha's enlightenment experience, which I'm sharing with you from the Pali Canon, there's a refrain that's repeated at the end of each verse that I think is extremely important. And the refrain is, I allow no such pleasure that arises in me to gain power over my mind. And earlier, during this same narration, when he's going through his austerities, he says very much the same verse, only instead of pleasure, he says, I allow no such painful feelings that arise in me.

[05:36]

to gain power over my mind. So whether in response to feelings of pain or of pleasure, all of which we're familiar with, the young prince uncovered a very important element of what became the path of practice, and that is to stop at feelings. Stop at feelings. This is a very important instruction. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit. In his own study of the way things come into being, meaning how his mind thinks, the workings of the mind, he did this very meticulous analysis and produced this theory that we have learned called the 12-fold chain of dependent co-arising. So I was talking about it the other day. This is the wheel that Lord Yama, the Lord of Death, is holding, the 12-fold chain. Chuofo chain is an elaboration of the first and second noble truth.

[06:42]

There is suffering. That's the outcome of the chain. And suffering is caused by ignorance, the first step in the chain, and desire, which is somewhere over here. So those are the two significant points in the chain that are named in the second noble truth. Ignorance, desire based in ignorance is the cause of our suffering. That's kind of a shorthand for these 12 steps. So he actually was watching his mind going through this round that created suffering over and over and over again. Basically, the content of his enlightenment was an understanding of the workings of the 12-fold chain, dependent co-arising. So one of the reasons that I mentioned just up at feelings is that feelings are one of the weakest places, one of the weakest links in the chain. Ignorance is another one, but ignorance is a harder link to break.

[07:45]

You know, breaking ignorance is really what enlightened wisdom is all about. And it takes a bit of study and understanding and contemplation and so on. And you can become enlightened through intellectual and contemplative wisdom. process. There is some teaching that that's so. Stopping at feelings is a little easier. It's a weaker cut in order to have some success in breaking the chain. And the reason is that feelings are retribution. They're a result of past actions. You don't have any choice about your feelings. They just come. You don't have to make them. They're not something you're manufacturing. They are a result of your past actions. So they do belong to you, but they basically just arise and you can notice them. The next step after feelings is desire. And that's the beginning of being caught in the karmic spin. Once you move toward desire, then you're pretty much fated to complete the circle.

[08:50]

After desire is clinging, grasping, which is kind of an intensification of desire, The images on the wheel for desire is someone sitting in a bar, you know, taking a drink. And as was shared with us in one of the Ways Seeking Mind talks, you know, there's one drink and then you have another one that pretty soon is four o'clock in the morning. So desire leads to itself to another desire and another desire. And then after that, you've got clinging. And the image for clinging, there is a person gathering apples, bushels full of apples. So now you're really into it. You're accumulating, you're hoarding. And after that, you've got the birth of this new life called becoming, birth, and then old age, sickness, and death. So basically you've finished that round of karmic action, but the energy of the wheel turning leads you to try it again. Well, that didn't work out so well, so maybe I'll try it again. This time it's going to go better. So, you know, another name for this is what we call habits.

[09:54]

habits of mind. How come you keep doing the same thing over and over again, even though it doesn't work out? Well, this is why the Buddha was understanding that. How does that happen to us? Well, that's how it happens to us. We don't stop at feelings. Feelings are only three kinds. There's positive, negative, and neutral feelings. That's all. And if you follow the advice I mentioned yesterday, you find yourself with a fearful feeling or a negative feeling, Just stay still and wait, and it will pass. Or if a lustful feeling, if you're walking, just keep walking. Look at the road ahead. Keep your eyes open. It will pass. So this is what we've come to learn, to watch how these feelings just arise, abide, and cease. So this is one of the primary strategies of the Heart Sutra.

[11:01]

You know, later on, this is an articulation of this instruction to stop at feelings. Just with this simple word, no. No. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. Don't. Do not move. No. Don't grab it. Don't try to make your wishes come true through self-clinging. So I find this to be a really interesting teaching in the face of our human tendency to get stuck in stories from the past, whether good stories or bad stories. Sort of like trophies that we have on the mantle back home, you know, when we were in high school. I'm sure your parents did the same thing. They just stick them all around the room. It was kind of embarrassing. Well, some of them are not so good, like third place or whatever. But there they all are, arrayed for us to see. And it's very hard for us to kind of let those go. And it's true of meditation experiences as well, you know.

[12:04]

It's over. Yeah, but it was so great, and it's gone, you know. Oh, but I saw this thing, you know. I once told, in that cabin over there, I told the then abbot of the Zen Center, Baker Roshi, that I had just seen the whole course of human evolution. From the beginning of life, All the way, you know, and I was just, I was dazzled with my insight. And I was so excited because I was sure this was it. And he listened to me. And then he said, you have quite a zoo in there. Yeah. So then he rang the bell and I left. So I also remembered Rep telling this story, you know, to us after he had broken his femur in a bike accident some years back. He said, he just noticed his mind kept going back to that moment when he turned the wheel of the bike this way and caught the rut in the road. He kept saying, now, if I just don't do that.

[13:07]

And he said, I couldn't stop going back to that moment before I fell. It was like this wishful thinking, you know. If only I hadn't... I have another friend who's... well into his, almost into his 80s now, who has done many good things in the world. And he's a physician and he's gotten all kinds of citations and so on. He said, he was telling me at lunch the other day that he's got this whole locker full of these citations. And he said, I'm not sure what to do with them, but sometimes when friends come over, I ask them if they'd like one of my citations to take home with them. So, you know. I think we do hope there's going to be a reward somehow for us, you know, some congratulations of some sort or the other for this great effort that we're making, you know, something to show for it. And I think there probably will be, but it's not going to come in the form I think that we're hoping for.

[14:09]

I think it's going to come in the form of letting go, you know, of release, giving things away, not getting something. When I first came to Green Gulch, Paul Disco was living there. He's the, I'm sure you know, the person who designed the gate and built this room. Of course, with help. He always had help. The guest house at Green Gulch and so on. An extraordinarily gifted carpenter. And I was sitting at the dining room table and he said, you know, it's not what you're going to get. It's what you're going to lose. Which kind of scared me. You know, I thought... I don't know, you know. I don't know if I want to lose something, but actually I think this is true. It's not what you're going to get here. It's what you're going to lose. It's going to make you feel good, feel better. At the same time, I think what's also really hard is to learn how to give up the things we treasure most, which for me is what many...

[15:15]

folks I've heard call the Zen teachers call the river of faces you know all the people who've come to practice together with us over the years like all of you right now you know it's hard to let you go and I even heard myself saying to poor Hakusho the last thing when he was getting ready to leave during the entering ceremony I said don't go you know I didn't plan to say that sorry because he has to go you know he has to go um that's the whole point you know to take this this wonderful inspiration out into the world and share it with others and i have to go too we all have to go that's where we're going we're going so anyway but it's difficult is not to hold on because you know at the same time that we know things are going and we have to go it does seem as though something amazing is about to happen All the time I feel like I'm on the edge of something quite extraordinary.

[16:18]

Not just this. I mean, this can't be it, right? Just this? I mean, really? Still? I mean, I feel like there's some potential here for something really amazing to happen any minute now. I've been waiting for 67 years just this again and again nothing to hold on to but there is an illusion of movement of before and after of beginning and middle and endings and it's from this illusion that we make up stories narrations depend on the illusion of before middle and after happy endings like working in the garden with Leslie.

[17:21]

What could be better than that? I like to tell the story, which some of you have heard, but some not, I'm sure, about Gregory Bateson coming to Zen Center with Richard Baker when he was Abbot, and he came into the Zendo one evening at the end of Zazen, and he told us this story. He said, they've invented a computer that thinks like a human... Actually, I just read that there's a computer that's writing poetry. But anyway, this was a while ago, 30 years ago. So we were all a little bit surprised. They'd come up with a computer, thinks like a human. And to test the computer, they asked it a question. Do you think like a human? So in those days, there was a pause before computers answered. And then it typed out, that reminds me of a story. So, thank you, Greg. So the narrative of the Buddhist enlightenment is just like that, too.

[18:26]

You know, it's a story. Because he couldn't really tell us what happened to him. That moment, or that many moment, or that huge moment under the tree when he woke up. There really wasn't anything to say. But he tried. And he tried in an amazing narrative called the Avatamsaka Sutra. If any of you have ever even picked it up, you know that it's an enormous volume of words. Beautiful words. We've been reading it at Gringold's New Year's for years now. I think we've gotten to, I don't know, page 30 or something. How far have we got? Have we gone around? Really? Oh, well. I exaggerate. Anyway, it's an amazing... It's quite an... It's a trance induction, as are many of these old sutras, particularly the Mahayana sutras. If you sit down and start reading the Abha Tam Saka Sutra out loud, you will enter into the vision of the sutra, as you will with the Lotus Sutra, somewhat like the Heart Sutras that way too.

[19:27]

They induce a trance, and you begin to see the images that are described in the story. It's quite amazing. You know, trees dripping with diamonds and... Jasmine roads and clouds of amber. I mean, the whole thing is just, you know, fascinating, fabulous, fabulous, fabulous vision. So, the problem with this sutra is that no one can really understand it. You can enter it, but you can't explain it. You can't teach anybody, you know, well, just read the sutra, that's all. Just keep reading it. Which is, that's okay. That would be one way to go. Just keep reading the sutra and stay in the vision. But out of his great compassion, the Buddha began to speak an ordinary language that people could understand. He tried the visions. In the Lotus Sutra as well, he shows a quarter of the universe for everyone so they can see it. And the people who were there, they see it, and then he closes the vision.

[20:32]

He takes it back into the white hairs of his forehead. And the people say, well, but what does it mean? What does reality mean? Just this is it. You've got to give us more than that. So then he said, there is suffering. There is a cause of your suffering. There is an end to your suffering. There's a path leading to the end of your suffering. He taught the twelve noble truths in our language that we can understand. And we can relate to suffering. All of us. So he helped us by first of all finding this pathway himself and following it all the way to the end. So he was quite a determined young man and we are deeply grateful for many thousands of years now. And he said, suppose a man wandering in a forest wilderness found an ancient path, an ancient trail, traveled by people of old. And he followed it up and by doing so discovered an ancient city.

[21:35]

an ancient royal capital where people of old lived, with parks and groves and lakes, walled round and beautiful to see. So I too found the ancient path, the ancient trail, traveled by the fully enlightened ones of old. So there are many different accounts of the Buddhist enlightenment given in the Pali Canon. And it says there that these different descriptions are given as one might view a tree. from above, from below, or from around the sides. So each one of them is a little different perspective on his awakening. And yet in each of these, it begins with the young prince bringing his mind into the present by opening his eyes, as I suggested to you this morning, and by focusing on his breath. These are common instruction. Open your eyes, focus on your breath. And then, in doing so, achieving tranquility, shamatha, calm abiding.

[22:39]

So this is one of the two big pieces of meditation practice, the first being calm down, calm your mind. If you don't calm your mind, all you'll see ever is ragged views of things around you, like drinking too much coffee. That's the mind that's creating that disturbance. So calm the mind. and discern the real. So shamatha, and then the next step is vipassana, insight. From a calm mind, you can see reality. So then he watched as the processes within his mind presented themselves directly to his awareness. So this is his study of the 12-fold chain. Clearly observed, the dharma, the king of the dharma, is thus. So the account I'm going to share this morning with you of his enlightenment is the one in which he discovers the four noble truths.

[23:44]

Now, when I had eaten solid food and regained my strength, I entered upon and abode in the first meditation. So this is the jhanas, first meditation, which is accompanied by thinking and exploring with happiness and pleasure born of release. But I allowed no such pleasant feeling as arose in me to gain power over my mind. So here's this important verse, refrain, that he says again and again. With the stilling of thinking and exploring, I entered upon and abode in the second jhana, which has internal confidence and one pointedness of mind. That's samadhi, one pointedness of mind. And pleasure, born of concentration. But I allowed no such pleasant feeling as arose in me to gain power over my mind. With the fading of happiness, I abode in equanimity, mindful and fully aware, still feeling pleasure with the body.

[24:47]

I entered and abode in the third meditation, the third jhana. But I allowed no such pleasant feeling as arose in me to gain power over my mind. With the abandoning of bodily pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of mental joy and grief, I entered upon and abode in the fourth jhana, but I allowed no such pleasant feeling as arose in me to gain power over my mind. So at this point in the narrative, the Buddha begins recounting the three knowledges that he realizes at this point in his meditation. The three knowledges are, the first is the recollection of his past lives. He was able to see his past lives. The second was insight into the death and rebirth of beings throughout the cosmos. So he saw a pattern going on. Not only his own past life, but all the other lives that were coming and going throughout time and space.

[25:51]

His third knowledge was insight into the ending of mental effluents or taints, what are called the ashravas, within the mind. So how to end the poisoning of our minds. He saw that. So these first two, the recollection of past lives and knowledge of the birth and death of beings throughout the cosmos, are common to almost all shamanic traditions throughout the world. This is a claim that shamans make. You know, it's quite interesting, you know, in the Native American tradition and other form, Brahmanical traditions. World round, shamans see past lives and they see the cosmos and the birth and death of beings. What's different about the Buddha's insight is how he interpreted that. Because what he did with his seeing of that was to understand the workings of karma, of cause and effect. And he saw that good actions lead to good results, bad actions lead to bad results.

[26:56]

This is very significant for the structure that he's building that we call the Dharma. So this is the discovery he made of the relative truth, how things relate to one another, and how the mind sees the world, how the mind imagines things to relate to one another. He says, again, this is all creations of the mind. He's studying the workings of his thinking mind. So this is the truth of how things are appearing to the mind. So, another name for this teaching is called the cause and effect. So cause and effect can also be called this and that, causality or this that causality and this therefore that or cause and effect this leads to that is basically required for any storytelling you can't have a story without this and then that once upon a time the little girl went out in the forest and the big wolf came so and the end you know we can't tell stories without this

[28:06]

working on this, that causality, which is very significant for the Buddha's liberation. Because at this point he turned his attention to this karmic pattern that was taking place in his own mind, in each moment, and he saw this process very clearly by turning the light of his attention inward, and then he saw that this Cause and effect relationship was basically a fundamental truth of existence. And he called this truth, noble truth. The four noble truths were a cause and effect relationship. Suffering is an effect, is a result. The cause of suffering is ignorance. Desire based in ignorance, so cause and effect. The cessation of suffering is an effect, a result. And the cause of the cessation of suffering is... the way you live your life, the path. Okay?

[29:08]

So these are two sets of cause and effect relationships, four noble truths. And as I said, the full-scale analysis that he describes in the early suttas of this first and second truth is the 12-fold chain. So a little further detail about how it all works. Pratitya Samuppada, dependent core rising. But I think perhaps the greatest insight he had of all was through his own experience, he confirmed the very real possibility of doing something about it, you know, of developing skills to cut through this veil of illusion, to actually put an end to the veil of illusion. And as I said, he discovered that the weakest link was right after feelings. Just stop at feelings. By stopping at feelings, the mind, in effect, is cut off from craving and clinging that would, by normal methods of habit-making, would follow.

[30:16]

So at an even more fundamental level, a conditioning level, that I wanted to also bring up this morning, what I have somewhat come to understand is that part of the basic human conditioning that allows us to produce this image or this illusion of cause and effect has to do with two very important assumptions we make and that we've been taught since childhood and that is one is called time and the other is called space. We actually assume that there is time and we assume space. The where and the when. I think this is one of the reasons that at Tassajara we say that the schedule is the teacher. Knowing where to be and on time is over and over again we're training ourselves to this encounter with something that we actually believe that there is a right time and a right place for us to be.

[31:25]

Really? Check it out. What happens if you wander off that way? What we'll come looking for is what happens. Bring you back. You want to learn it from inside, not from wandering off. Inside, meeting. You know, error points meet. That's where we see. That's where we learn. Not if we avoid learning. We'll never see it. So time implies cause and effect as if there were something happening. Something happening before and something happening later. Like yesterday and tomorrow. And space implies that there are boundaries as if there were something happening here in a limited location like Zen Mountain Center. So this is the circle of water that is only visible to us as far as the eye of our practice can see.

[32:28]

But it does look like a circle of water, doesn't it? So... Space and time are these two big assumptions that we make about reality because, and for us, you know, it seems obvious, seems kind of like a no-brainer. And yet it was at the very point in his meditation when the Buddha experienced an absence of this basic conditioning that we call space and time that the cycle of suffering collapsed, kind of like stars do when they run out of fuel. So this was the final knowledge, the total release that the young seeker had longed, endeavored to find. This was the enlightenment of the Buddha. And in the tradition, the first words that he says when he comes back from this deep understanding, now a Buddha, no longer a Bodhisattva, were these.

[33:39]

Seeking but not finding the house builder, I traveled through the round of countless births. Oh, painful is birth ever and again. House builder, you have now been seen. You shall not build the house again. Your rafters have been broken down. Your rich pole is demolished too. My mind has now attained the unformed nirvana, a mind of no abode, and reached the end of every kind of craving. So, you know, ever since this realization of the Buddha, we of the Buddhist tradition have been trying to fathom what it is that he understood that morning when he looked up at the star. And even though he said some words and we've tried very hard to interpret them for many volumes over many thousands of years, still we're really wanting to know for ourselves, you know, what did he see? How many of you have looked up at the star in the morning like...

[34:42]

Did he see? So there's a very simple formulation that has been left on the stone walls of Buddhist temples, the most ancient temples. And if you like, it's amazing. You can see some of these carvings at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. I couldn't believe it because I'd heard about them, but they actually have some of them there. It's quite special to go and stand in front of them. And what they say... is this. When this is, that is. From the arising of this comes the arising of that. When this isn't, that isn't. From the stopping of this comes the stopping of that. The first person that the Buddha encountered on the road, after his enlightenment, asked him, are you a god?

[35:55]

And the Buddha said, no. He said, are you a demon? He said, no. He said, are you a water spirit? The Buddha said, no. He said, are you a human? The Buddha said, no. And the man said, well, what are you? And the Buddha said, I'm awake. So today, back to the practical side of things, I wanted to bring up another part of your body, and that is, or our body, I've got one too, which is the spine. Amazing, amazing spine. I don't know how excited you all get, you know, Googling things, but I really, really love to Google just about anything. you know, and get totally lost. But the spine is truly amazing.

[36:57]

And I'm going to tell you a little bit of why that's so. Anyway, there are 33 vertebrae in the spine, and they interlock to form the spinal column. We've numbered them and divided them into regions, you know, for our purposes. There are seven in the neck called the cervical vertebrae, There are 12 in the mid-back, thoracic vertebra. The lumbar, that's the one we know best, lower back. There's five sacrum and four coccyx. 24 of these vertebra move. Top ones, top 24. The bottom nine do not move, they're fused together. So the coccyx and the sacrum are not movable vertebra, but they provide the base of support for the pelvis, sacrum, and for the ligaments that enter into the pelvic girdle, and that's the coccyx.

[37:58]

This is really nice. The cervical, the neck vertebra, so there's seven of those. C1, usually we only hear about these numbers when somebody breaks it, you know, it's like, yeah, but it's C7. Anyway, C1, which is the first one, right below the skull, is shaped so that we can do this. We can do yes. C2, the next one down, is shaped so that we can do this. We can say no. Yes, C1. No, C2. Who knew? Anyway, so... The thoracic, the 12 thoracic, which are down the mid-back, basically hold the ribcage and protect our heart and our lungs, and... The motion of the thoracic spine is limited. They don't move so much. But they do, they are convex in that they curve outward from the body, the thoracic.

[39:04]

The cervical vertebrae curve are concave. They curve in. And this is the most important part. When we try to find an upright posture, it's really important. Sorry, Kip, didn't have to go. Bye. it's really important that you pay attention to the curves, the natural curves in your spine. It's an amazing design. The spine is designed to be a spring to take the force of gravity on top of our heads. So if you walk with your head this way, slumped, you will feel a lot of pain in your body because it's not the design. The design, as any two-year-old can show you by the way they walk, is upright. with the weight on the top of your head and the spring of your spine providing a cushion to protect you. Same with sitting. So cervical curves in, concave, thoracic curves out. These are all somewhat slight curves.

[40:06]

And then the lumbar, the lower back, the main function, there's five of those and they're big bones. Their function is to bear weight and to hold the body up and to help us to carry heavy objects. So we're going to be very careful with the lumbar, how we treat those vertebrae. And the lumbar curve is concave, goes in toward the abdomen. And the sacrum and the coccyx together are kind of tucked under, so they are convex. So you basically have this S-shape going all the way down the back. I don't know if you can see this picture, but that's the way the S shape looks in our spine. And so one other thing I wanted to say about that, other than please explore those curves, honor them, allow them to, you know, notice them.

[41:11]

And one way to find them is to exaggerate a little bit, like, you know, over, over arch. your vertebra, you know, roll forward and then come back up and really explore the movement of your vertebra. So you can see like one instruction for finding upright is to slouch all the way over and then come back up. And then that is kind of a natural posture for the spine. So I think an emphasis I'd like to offer you in working with your spine is that rather than think of upright sitting, which I think is one way we express it, think of uprighting. These are verbs. Our body is alive. It's a verb. It's moving. It's not a thing. It shouldn't be static. You should always be trying to figure out what's that little adjustment that I'm missing that would release the difficulties I'm having over here. Continue to explore your living body and enjoy your living body. Thank you all very much.

[42:12]

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