I love to taste the truth, the best practice works. Good morning. Good morning. So, some of the faces here I recognize and some of them I don't. How many people are new today? Lots. Good. Did you go down and sit? Yeah? Good. Some of us have been sitting for some amount of time and some of us have been sitting for less amount of time, but the mind that we sit with is the same, same mind.

[01:00]

Who believes that? It's true. The way it's true is, is that our true nature, the mind of our true nature, the mind that we are given as a gift for being a human being, just like that. Just because we're human beings, we have this gift. The gift is our true nature and it's our, it's our, what can I say, deepest, deepest connectedness. It's the mind that is that. It doesn't even have to know it, but it is that mind. If we, if we know that mind, it really doesn't make any difference if

[02:07]

when we're sitting we are restless or in pain or full of doubt, regret, jealousy, and so on. Because we know those things to be passing shows, to be so much, so much entertainment that we can choose or not. Okay. This Buddha behind me, Michael, I think this is right, is from Gandhara.

[03:09]

This Buddha, I feel funny saying behind me, it's not really, I don't feel it behind me exactly, comes from a place in the world that's having a great deal of suffering now and yet can sit just that way, stable, upright, unmoved, unmoving. Not unmoved, but unmoving in the midst of it. Okay. When we begin this path of awakening, we begin it with a mind that has been conditioned by whatever it is that we happen to be born into, whether we're born with a certain kind of skin, a certain kind of height,

[04:13]

a certain kind of mind, a certain kind of environmental conditions, whatever. Those, we can say, causes and conditions produce a mind in us that was very useful for a very long time. It was useful because we had to figure out how to get, basically how to survive through old enough for us to take care of ourselves. The problem is that usually the people who raise us are not stable and clear themselves and so usually we're raised in conditions where we have excessive, can we say, coverings over of this mind that is our true nature. So when people come to Zen in the beginning, what we see usually at first is a lot of confusion

[05:15]

and when people sit down at first what they see is a mind that is just bouncing off the wall. Right? So the first part, you know, Zen, what Zen tells you is just be present. Well, thanks, you know. A lot of good that does. And, you know, the sad part, or you can say the wonderful part is that basically that's going to be the instruction, period. You know, just be present. So there you are on your cushion completely deluded in the sense that the ego that we think is us, the ego self,

[06:21]

is way dominant, way dominant. So the mind is all over the place. You have lots of things that you're considering. You know good and bad. You think you're a certain kind of a person. You think everybody else is a certain kind of a person. And basically underneath it, quietly alone in bed at night, you feel really alone. And that's true. And it's true because all of the voices, the habit voices, the habit patterns are maintaining this sense of separation. Probably so that we can survive. It's a handy thing. It's actually kind of a good thing. It's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It's just that it gets overworked. It becomes dominant. And the truth of it is, it becomes so dominant, we begin to feel, some people do anyway,

[07:25]

some people never do what I'm going to tell you. Like for example, when this whole thing started, when the United States on September 11th was hit, you know, for those two weeks it was really, really, really interesting to watch. You know, before we started bombing everything. It was really interesting to watch, particularly to watch our president, Mr. George Bush, President George Bush. At first, he was kind of, didn't quite know what to do. It was kind of shaky. Did you get that feeling about him? He was a little bit open, a little bit unsure, a little bit not kind of grounded, a little bit. And then, little bit by little bit, you could watch his self come together.

[08:28]

And by the end of the two weeks, he knew who he was. He had grabbed on to something to do. The something to do that was out there was making his situation stable, solid, strong, clear as a bell to him. And he was on the right side. And somebody was out there who was evil and bad. It was simple, black and white. No problem. I know what to do. I know who I am. I'm ready. I'm going to take care of it. I'm going to bomb everything. And, you know, secretly, inside, I was thinking, I'm sorry to say this, but I really am sorry, but the thought came up to me in myself, and I said, well, good, bomb everything. Kill everything. Get the guy. But it was a painful thought to me, because I know that the United States and Afghanistan

[09:31]

and everything else in the world is dependently co-risen. This is not an event that happened to the United States for no reason. Anyway, so there was our President Bush, completely filled with delusion and not seeing that that's the case. And the same thing is true when we sit in zazen at first. But then there's something in us that realizes that the way we've been doing things and the mind that we're doing it with is not working on some level. So some part of us comes up with a vow, a vow to awaken. It's called bodhicitta. We would like to wake up and really understand the world at a deeper level than just good and bad. So we begin to sit,

[10:33]

and the mind begins to develop a certain amount of attention, a certain amount of awareness. And what happens is, the more you develop a certain kind of awareness, a certain energy behind being present, immediately, almost immediately, up come the hindrances. The ego self is going, and the hindrances actually, even though they seem really, we can't get through them, they're really kind of superficial. It's the first defense of the ego structure. It doesn't think it's really very much threatened. So it'll just send out a few hindrances just to distract us. Anything to keep us not being present. Really. So we start grabbing after enlightenment is one of them. We resist things, we fall asleep in zazen, we have doubt.

[11:39]

We are, what are the other ones? Hate, we have aversion. I forgot the other ones, look them up. But anyway, oh, another one, another big one is intellectualizing. It's understanding the Dharma. I'm going to understand what's happening here. We think that understanding will work. And the ego structure goes, fine, go ahead, understand it. What about this? What about that? How about this? Decide that, do this. If I just do this, it's very busy, very busy. Big distraction, big distraction. So as Zen students, we understand that that's the case. We still pay attention and we go deeper. We get past the hindrances. Our little ego structure is getting a teeny bit nervous, but not too nervous. We keep sitting, we keep paying attention, we keep coming back to the present.

[12:44]

We keep watching and we begin to see patterns of behavior. Now the ego structure is kind of watching what we're doing, very interested now. We usually pick something that's pretty easy to watch, mostly on a gross level. We're caught by something, we're present enough to see what happens before it, and before that, and before that. We often see that in Zazen, but by now we're developing enough attention so that it's leaking into our daily life. So the kind of presence that we're developing on a cushion is moving into our daily life. This is necessary. And then we really begin to see things.

[13:46]

We begin to see behavior, reactive behavior that we do. Something happens, boom, I'm out of here. That's one. Or something happens, boom, and you know, I hate that person, you're such a jerk, blah, blah, blah. You know, basically something happens and we become this machine. We think we're right, we're doing the right thing, we think we're helping ourselves, we're going to be happy if we leave, if we avoid, if we're not in this argument or whatever. Whatever our usual, habitual survival mechanism, patterns, systems are, that's what comes up, those reactive patterns, and that's what we begin to see. We begin to see them and we begin to think, Wow, this is really, at the end of this pattern, I suffer. At the end of this pattern. And we get more, more attentive.

[14:51]

More attentive. And our zazen deepens and that zazen is taken into the life, into our life. The first thing that we see when we see these patterns, and we see that there's suffering at the end of it, we think that these patterns, and they are, actually, huge, and this is the next kind of onslaught by our, what I'm calling today anyway, our ego self. The next onslaught is that we believe that this pattern, that gets us into so much suffering, is huge, demonic. And we have no strength, we feel hopeless in its wake. And the reason why we feel that way, because even though we're really, really watching it, and we know it's going to end up in suffering, we can't help doing the very same thing. At this point, practice gets really embarrassing.

[15:56]

Before this point, it wasn't a problem that we got into some kind of situation, we did our old habit pattern, we thought it was right, we smashed somebody, tons of suffering comes for other people as well as ourselves, and we were justified. You know, we were doing the best we could, we blah, blah, blah, whatever it was, not a problem. But now, we see that this pattern is something that we've done over, and [...] over again. Right? Right? And we see now where it's going, we really don't want to go there, and we are completely taken away. You know, I remember one time, it was just so horrible, you know, I just ended a relationship with somebody. No, to tell the truth, they ended the relationship with me.

[16:58]

And obviously, to tell you the rest of the story, it had to have been that way, right? So, I still wanted the relationship. So, of course, you know, most of the time a relationship just doesn't, like, end. It kind of fritters away, sort of, especially for the person who still wants it to happen. You kind of, you know that actually you're not having this relationship, and you don't want to, you don't want to, but you get in the car and you drive by the house. Right? Or, you know, you know that you shouldn't call. You just know, do not, please don't pick up the phone. So, this place in practice is very, very embarrassing, because you see yourself do the behavior, and you know you really don't want to be doing it anymore, but you don't have the attentiveness yet.

[18:07]

The energy of your attention is not enough to not do it. It's not enough. So, we sit. Go back to sitting. More, more attention. More sitting. Then what happens? Anyway, this is, I'm telling you this story, but a couple of things. One is, you know, it's no good as a story unless you have that experience yourself. That's the first thing. And the other thing is, this is just my story about it today. I mean, I, you know, take it with a grain of salt. There's lots of ways to continue your practice, but, I don't know, it might be helpful. So, there it is. The next thing that happens is kind of interesting. The next thing that happens is that you are watching these patterns.

[19:10]

And I mean, at this point, you know that you're just watching the patterns. You're not intellectualizing them, hopefully, anymore. You're really just watching. And this is a good place like Koan. And I don't mean old, the old classic Koan thing, but a Koan like is, like for example, if you wanted to watch something like respect. Let's say you were having lots of feelings around respect. What you would do is, you would just have that word in the back of your mind somewhere, because you know you're studying it. It's just really back there. It's clear. This is what you're studying. You want to be studying everything you can know about respect, yourself and respect. So, every time something happens that, you know, somebody didn't quite bow to you quite enough, or you don't feel like bowing to another person, or you feel slighted in some way, all of those little instances are really carefully observed vis-à-vis your Koan,

[20:19]

which in this case is respect. This is a very interesting time in practice. So, what happens is that at some point the pattern that you before knew was going to end up in suffering, but were too really inattentive, really, to stop yourself from doing it. Now your attention, the energy behind your attention is strong enough. Your presence is strong enough. You see the pattern. You see everything that has to do with it all the way back, and you no longer do the behavior. And this is also a really interesting time in practice, because you've done that behavior for so much that when some kind of something, another person or whatever comes towards you, or a certain kind of thought comes towards you, you know who you are because this is how you respond. But, when you no longer respond that way, you don't have the slightest idea who you are.

[21:26]

Right? And it's a very kind of funny place. The age you feel when that happens is about the age you were when you needed to develop that particular pattern. Kind of interesting. So, sometimes people feel like fifteen when they drop a certain pattern, or eight, or five, or two, you know. No, that's true. And you just stand there like... You don't have another behavior. You only know that you're not going to do that one. That's for sure. You're not going to do that one. But nothing else has come up. And you know, in a way, the reason why you don't see anything else come up is because we don't, at that point, we don't yet know yet that our life really doesn't come from here out. Our life comes from everything toward us and creates us in response if you're really there for it.

[22:28]

So, we're in a place where we think we need to have a response from this point. We think we need to develop another ego-self. But in Zen, that's exactly what we're not going to do. So it's good to be in a place where you really don't have a behavior automatically to put out there. Better you just stop and wait and watch. And then if somebody holds out their hand, you put your hand out and you shake. It's real easy. Okay. You want to know what happens next? Thank you. Thank you.

[23:33]

What happens next is really interesting. It's kind of a transition place. We want to remember here that what we're doing is we're really kind of dismantling the self. We're studying what we think of as a separate me. And the image that last week anyway I was kind of playing with is that these behaviors that I'm talking about is kind of like the outside of a tube, let's say. They're the structures that we think we are. But the structures are really only surrounding this emptiness that's in the middle of it. There is no self there. The self really only is in a certain kind of way just these outer structures that we attach to and think are so valuable to us. So we're kind of slowly dismantling these walls

[24:40]

that keep us separate from our true life which is the life of everything altogether. So this next stage is kind of interesting. The next stage is interesting because it's a transition stage. What's happening is at this point the structure of the self or these reactive habit patterns are actually beginning to fall apart now. And this is a really important moment. And the reason why it's important is because if we're not really attentive at this point we get whipped back into the old habit pattern with the strength of the energy that we've been building in attention. So you have to be really, really attentive. So when these structures are beginning to fall apart

[25:42]

we both feel kind of afraid and hopeful at the same time. And what we're asked to do, again, is simply stay present continuing to watch very carefully whatever the habit pattern is that you've been studying. And if we do that carefully and gently and determinedly at some point that structure will fall away. And what you see is you see the Dharma. You see the truth of our existence. You see that this structure is surrounding no self. And you have seen the dependent co-rising of all of it.

[26:48]

And because you've seen the dependent co-rising of all of it you have a really clear picture of the suffering of the uncaused suffering of the world. It is nobody's fault. So you see suffering and its cause. You see selflessness. You see emptiness. You feel concentrated. Your heart is open because it already is open. There's just no wall in front of it. And you feel connected. And everyone who practices like this has these kinds of experiences. We have little insights, big insights, and so on. Many, many, many, many all along the path.

[27:50]

So there's that. And then if you want to... It's really kind of no big deal. If people want to pursue that kind of thing some people will. Some people who are interested in studying the self can do that. Buddhism offers this way. And like I said in the beginning all we're asked to do is stay awake, is stay present. Keep coming back to the present moment. Because that's the tool. Through all of those, you know, in this case I'm sorry to say steps and stages through all of that way the only thing we're asked to do is please just stay present. Just be awake and stay present. Just watch what's happening. It's all there in front of you. So I didn't think it would take me that long.

[29:23]

But I did. I brought a book with me to read but I won't. The book I brought was Ivan Ilyich, Death of Ivan Ilyich. At the end of the Death of Ivan Ilyich you know, he has a miserable life and he dies. You know, in pain and misery and stuff like that. But at the end he forgives. He forgives everything. So the way I was going to connect it is that in the end when you see this whole pattern thing you really forgive. You forgive yourself and you forgive other people who you feel hurt you. Because you've walked through the whole thing and you can see. It's really just tragic. It's not anybody's fault. It's just sad, tragic that we have the life that we have because without practicing attention human beings are really dangerously insane.

[30:25]

You know? So please go out and be present as much as you can and don't attach to what you see. Just keep watching with gentleness and with kindness and just keep being present and maybe we can all kind of find a way to a little bit, what? Well, you know, I was going to say a nicer life but that's not true. Yeah, this is fine. So, I'm done. Our intention...

[31:07]

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