Good morning, everyone. Is this working? Can you hear me? Okay. Let me just take a look around and see you all. See who's here. Okay. Thank you. Welcome. So as I looked around, I noticed that some of you I knew, some of you were familiar to me, and some of you I think that I am seeing for the first time. So could I just, out of curiosity, have a show of hands for people who might be here for the first time? Okay, goodly number. And for people who were here for their first, you know, five or so times. Okay, so I'll see a number of people who are new to Zen Center.

[01:02]

So welcome and thank you for coming. Often when I give a Saturday lecture, I direct my comments to the newer people. I think that's appropriate since it is sort of an open house kind of day. And so when I do that, what that means is that I usually try to talk about things that are easily understood, easily digestible, and that might make you want to come back for more. You know, makes sense, right? So I'm not going to do that today. I'm going to give you the strong notes and we'll see what happens. You may never come back and I may never be invited to talk again. So we'll see. You know, it's a big week for religion. I mean, you know, we got Passover at one end and we got Easter at the other end, which is tomorrow. And we've got this beautiful Easter-like weather.

[02:03]

And, you know, it's sort of a celebration, right, of the rebirth of nature in a way. And sort of inviting us to our own spiritual rebirth. So this would be a really good time, I think, to talk about the kind of similarities that we can find in the various religious spiritual traditions. and how perhaps at some level it is all essentially the same, or in the words of somebody, how all that rises must converge. Okay. I think that's wrong. I think that's wrong. And I think that that kind of belief that it's all kind of one and that, you know, ultimately we're all talking about the same thing in different languages. I think that this kind of belief leads to nowhere but to confusion and muddled thinking and sort of a vague niceness.

[03:07]

So... And what I would like to suggest today, and you can take it or leave it as you will, as you can take and leave anything, right, that we have to say here or that anyone has to say here, is that if we are serious about practicing the Buddha way, we cannot at the same time be practicing in another faith tradition. Okay? I know that it's very popular these days to think that we can do Christian Zen or Buddhist Zen or I can be a Catholic, Buddhist, or whatever. You know, I'm thinking of, for example, Thomas Merton, who said that he wanted to be a better Catholic in order to become a better Buddhist. And, you know, this is what I consider sloppy, muddled thinking that sort of verges on niceness so we can all get along and we don't have any uncomfortable disagreements. Um... I don't think that this really serves anybody well. I think it's useful to have fair respect for each tradition, but I think we do all of the traditions a disservice by pretending that they're all essentially the same.

[04:20]

I was raised as a Christian, and I'm thinking that over the last several years I've gone to, I think, two Christian services. One, my father's funeral, Mass, and another more recently... a service for the partner of a friend. And at neither of them did I take communion. Now, the reason I didn't do this is because I had too great a respect for the sacrament to receive it as a non-believer. So this is the kind of respect that I think that we might want to cultivate rather than it's all just the same or it's all okay or if it feels good, it's okay. So I think that trying to pretend that we can practice different traditions, which are in my way, and we'll talk about this in a moment, in absolute contradiction to each other, is intellectually and spiritually dishonest.

[05:21]

So I'm not saying, of course, that one cannot take certain, say, for example, Buddhist techniques, such as meditation. loving kindness practices, mindfulness, et cetera, and apply them to whatever tradition we're talking about. For example, when people come downstairs to go to the meditation hall, we don't stop them at the door and ask to see there's a membership card or the secret card. Buddhist tattoo on their shoulder, anything like that. You know, everybody is welcome, and anybody can, you know, zazen, meditation, is, you know, pretty dogma-free. But, and we can do this to good, and people, I think, can do this to good purpose, but to do it without having a Buddhist understanding of what you are doing is, I think, quite different, quantitatively, excuse me, qualitatively, from doing it with an understanding and a grounding in the Dharma.

[06:27]

So what happens is that if we do this kind of thing too much, we run the risk of reducing Buddha Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, to a mere psychological or physical therapy. Now, if you want to reduce your blood pressure, problem is out there and it's a good thing. You know, if you want to deal with, you know, conflictive emotions, probably loving-kindness meditation is a good thing. But that's not what it's for, okay? The Buddha said, all of my teachings have but one taste, as the ocean has but one taste of salt, and that is the taste of liberation. Buddhism is not therapy, even though it may have therapeutic side effects. So I'd like to read something to you. And this is one of my very favorite small, it's only smaller number of pages, Buddhist books. It's called The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

[07:32]

Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American-born monk. And he's also been very, very, he's an amazing scholar. And if you read this for nothing else, the prose style alone will knock you out. And he's also been very active in the translation of many of the Pali Suttas. So I'd like to read what he has to say about the nature of syncretism, from the other word, presents itself right away. One approach to resolving this problem, and that is popular today, is the eclectic one. to pick and choose from the various traditions whatever seems amenable to our needs, welding together different practices and techniques into a synthetic whole that is personally satisfying. Thus one may combine Buddhist mindfulness meditation with sessions of Hindu mantra recitation, Christian prayer with Sufi dancing, Jewish Kabbalah with Tibetan visualization exercises,

[08:34]

Eclecticism, however, though sometimes helpful in making a transition from a predominantly worldly and materialistic way of life to one that takes on a spiritual hue, eventually wears thin. While it makes a comfortable halfway house, it is not comfortable as a final vehicle. Just a personal anecdote. Some years ago, I ran into a friend who used to live here, and I hadn't seen him for a very long time. And so, you know, we sort of chatted, and what's up? What have you been doing lately? And he said, oh, I finally, after all this, you know, looking around, found a spiritual practice that works for me, and I really feel at home in it. I said, oh, great. What is it? He said, well, it's kind of a combination of Tibetan Buddhism and Santaria. Yeah. All I could say was that I hope no chickens die. To continue with Bukubodi, there are two interrelated flaws in eclecticism that account for its ultimate inadequacy.

[09:36]

One is that eclecticism compromises the very traditions it draws upon. The great spiritual traditions themselves do not propose their disciplines as independent techniques that may be excised from their setting. and freely recombined to enhance the felt quality of our lives. They present them rather as parts of an integral whole, of a coherent vision regarding the fundamental nature of reality and the final goal of the spiritual quest. A spiritual tradition is not a shallow stream in which one can wet one's feet and then be a quick retreat to the shore. It is a mighty tumultuous river which would rush through the entire landscape of one's life. And if one truly wishes to travel on it, one must be courageous enough to launch one's boat and head out for the depths. The second defect in eclecticism follows from the first. As spiritual practices are built upon visions regarding the nature of reality and the final good, these visions are not mutually compatible.

[10:41]

These visions are not mutually compatible. When we honestly examine the teachings of these traditions, we will find that major differences in perspective reveal themselves to our sight. Differences which cannot easily be dismissed as alternative ways of saying the same thing. Rather, they point to very different experiences constituting a supreme goal and a path that must be trodden to reach that goal. I told you he had a great pro style, right? I wish I could go out like that. So, anyhow, to expand a little on that, the basic worldview of Buddhism is radically, radically different from that of the theistic religions, the revealed theistic religions. I'm not going to stick to Judaism and Christianity because I'm presuming that most of us in this room come from that background, and I don't know enough about Islam on a first-hand basis to include it. So, if that is offensive to anybody, I...

[11:44]

I apologize, I just want to go with what I know. So anyhow, the basic worldview of Buddhism, the most radically differs from the revealed religions that we find in America, predominantly, is that in Buddhism, there is no God and no soul. Okay? No God and no soul. And nothing that stands in for either of them. This is very, very important. And that's pretty different from either Judaism or Christianity. I mean, how can we reconcile the two ways of looking at the world without ignoring what is essential to Buddhist teaching. I personally don't think you can. So what I'd like to do is to examine the propositions and to see how truly, deeply radical they are and to how they undermine our basic beliefs about how the world works and how we ourselves are in this world. So, you know, any sophisticated believer, any, you know, Christian or Jew who has done, you know, reading and practice in his or her tradition, particularly the more elevated teachers and their writings and sounds, you know, who pretty much agree that there is probably no man in the sky and no divine personality and no god of parking spaces, you know, who, you know, reaches in on a micro level and sort of adjusts things for us.

[13:13]

Anybody who has a good understanding of their own spiritual tradition will probably be willing to admit that such a God is wishful thinking. And here some who have more perhaps reading in the mystics will be willing to say perhaps that God is unspeakable, indescribable, and can only be talked of in negative terms. And yet, there is something that we can tentatively call God. So sometimes some of the phrases or words that get used are the ground of being, an ontological substructure, divine nothingness, and lots of other capitalized abstract nouns. A theist might even go so far as to hold up through to nature as another name for God. So, you know, well, you guys got Buddha nature, right? Isn't that the service God?

[14:14]

I mean, you know, when we're talking about God, we're talking about one thing, but you said Buddha nature, and we're all talking about the same thing, right? Uh-uh. I don't think so. I mean, isn't it? Like, sort of? No. No. Buddha nature is not some thing, some static ground of being or ontological substructure, but rather Buddha nature is the way things work. Okay? It's a description of how the world... how the universe, how we ourselves as being in the universe are. It is not something you can grasp onto, no matter how tentatively. And some of the core areas of a non-theistic understanding of the world are that there's no one behind the scenes watching, no man behind the curtain. No one is judging, keeping score, or condemning. things do not happen by divine whim. The moral universe is governed by cause and effect.

[15:16]

Things are as they are, and things are as they seem. And as Dogen quotes an old Chinese monk saying, nothing in the universe is hidden. All things have absolute value, and all things are utterly devoid of value. Um... Let's move on to no soul. No soul. The Buddha speaks of the three marks of conditioned existence as dukkha, anika, anatta. So dukkha, as most of you know, is usually translated as suffering. And what it means, well, let's just look at a few of their translations. We may say suffering. We may say incompleteness. We may say unsatisfactoriness. We may say dis-ease. We may say the sense that things are never quite the way we want them and don't stay that way.

[16:17]

So dukkha extends throughout our entire lives and does not necessarily mean simply egregious suffering, like a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, right? It can be, you know, we're sitting here, it's a pretty nice day, and part of us likes to be here, and part of us, you know, we're feeling a little... You know, maybe our knees are cramping. We're thinking, we're sort of torn. Do I want to be in here? You know, listening to this, listening to this godless Cretan. You know, I'd like to be outside, playing around. So, you know, that's a form of Chico, right? It's not, you know, you're sitting, you're not starving, but, you know. And then there's a Mika. And that's transitoriness, okay? So transitoriness is pretty obvious to anybody that looks around, right? Anything we look at is in the process of transitioning constantly. If you think about it, like even something as apparently stable as a book or that statue on the altar, which has survived for probably a good 2,000 years,

[17:21]

is still, you know, constantly exchanging, you know, molecules, you know, losing its integrity. It's just losing its integrity a little bit more slowly than we are. Everything is changing. And then we get to anatta. Anatta, no soul. This is, without a doubt, the most single radical of the Buddha's insights. So what we say here is that there is nothing nothing, nothing of us which is not subject to change. There is no hidden nugget of Jeffrey-ness that will go on after, you know, the mind and body of Jeffrey have become other things. There is no essential unchanging essence. This is a lot to take in. And so, you know, sometimes people say, well, Buddhism says there's no self. Well, That's not exactly accurate. What Buddhism says is that we misunderstand the nature of the self.

[18:24]

Okay? I mean, like, you know, obviously this is Jeffrey, and that's Tim, and that's Blanche, and, you know, we can tell the difference, mostly. Well, we should take people to care. Okay, well, next time, Jerry, and there's Jeffrey, we get them, right? So, what we're saying when we say there is no... soul is that the self is empty. And what the self is empty of is individual existence. The self cannot stand on its own two feet, so to speak. So we've got LJ and we've got Jeffrey, but if there weren't the specific gravity, the specific air pressure, the specific mix of oxygen, the specific genetic combinations, et cetera, there would be neither Jeffrey or LJ. or Tim, or Lynch, or any of you. So we are composed. Hopefully we were composed in both means of the word.

[19:27]

But we are composed of many things. We are connected by all the things which define us. And we are comprised or composed of everything in the universe which is not us. So that's the sense in which there is no soul. no individual soul that we can sort of, you know, take with us. So I know that when we speak in negatives, such as, you know, no God, no soul, it sounds as though we're denying something. You know, it sounds as though our practice is based on the denial of the practices of others. But, you know, I don't think this is true. This is not my understanding. I don't, when people ask me if I'm an atheist, I tell them I'm a Buddhist. There's a difference. Because these are not negations. They are simply shorthand for a worldview which is liberating, inclusive, and presents us with a radical challenge to a primitive understanding and perceptions.

[20:35]

Okay? Um, the Buddhists, um, sometimes when, uh, in the scriptures, when somebody has, like, an amazing insight, um, you know, at least in the early Buddhist scriptures, they talk about as though things had been upside down and were suddenly set right. You know, as though you suddenly realize that all of your assumptions, all of your perceptions about how the world works and what it is, were wrong. And you suddenly see, oh, it's exactly the opposite. You know? Um... So, you know, this is what I mean by a primitive understanding and perceptions. You know, a primitive understanding is that, you know, I am in the world as an independent being and furthermore, the most important independent being. Because even now, if I stood up and turned completely around, I would confirm that I am the center of the world.

[21:38]

Right? Right? Try it. Don't do it now. But, you know, try it. You know, next time around the street, just turn it on. You know, it's obvious. Everything relies around you. Whoever you might be. So, you know, so, so just because we think it, just because we've thought it for a long time, just because this is kind of the way we see things, doesn't make them true. What a trip. So. A lot of what I've said, I've said in sort of shorthand, because we don't have the time and this is not the place to explicate things fully. But if you'd like, we can talk some more in the back of the dining room. And, you know, that's really all I have to say today. I could go on and on, but it's such a pretty day. We should release those of you who want to go out to do that. And so have a nice day.

[22:45]

You know, it's beautiful. Enjoy yourselves. Okay, and thank you all for coming.

[22:50]

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