I'd like to speak about the second of the Four Noble Truths called Samudaya, the cause of suffering, commonly understood as the cause of suffering. And then secondly, about not getting stuck, not getting caught. And by that I mean not getting caught in our... mental habits in our emotional habits in our karmic what catches us karmically technically in buddhist technical language this is speaking about shunyata about emptiness the teaching that was propounded by Nagarjuna sometime in the distant past.

[01:14]

11th century, 5th century, sometime long ago. And both of these topics, both this comment and both what I have to say about the second noble truth, Samudaya, the cause of suffering, and about not getting stuck, I'm hoping will act as a commentary on the fourth talk of Suzuki Roshi's in the compilation of his talks called Not Always So. And this fourth talk, he didn't, you know, entitle his talks, but Ed Brown, who edited the book, gave a title to each one. And this one he called, Jumping Off the Top of a Hundred Foot Pole. And that's a reference, for those of you not familiar with that, that's a reference to an old Zen story.

[02:18]

So the Four Noble Truths and the Second truth thereof, are very fundamental teachings of Buddhist understanding conveying the spirit of Buddhism. Given by Shakyamuni Buddha mythically and perhaps historically as well, soon after his enlightenment experience, he spoke, he went back to the five disciples, the five ascetics that he had been practicing with and delivered a talk and in that talk he spoke about the Four Noble Truths so by its place so to speak mythically we can see that it's important but though it's important it's important very much as conveying the spirit of practice

[03:26]

From a Zen practice perspective, there is no teaching except as it conveys the spirit of practice. It doesn't matter, except insofar as it conveys the spirit of practice. So what I mean to be, I mean to be making a distinction here between something that's set. Oh, this is teaching of Buddhism. and this sense of conveying the spirit of it. You know, teaching A may be conveying the spirit of practice today, but teaching B may be conveying the spirit of practice tomorrow. Teaching A may be practiced today, but from a Zen perspective, not only B, but anti-A may be practiced tomorrow.

[04:31]

This is the feeling of what our practice is like, rather than, you know, a set thing. In that sense, it's the opposite. It's 180 degrees opposite fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is this is the way it is, this is the way it always has been, this is the way it always will be. For our teaching, for Zen practice, it's the opposite of that. It's very flexible. very open so you know we sometimes the progress of our practice is that grasping is delusion but merging with principle is still not enlightenment in other words we realize that we're deluded and that we grasp at things, or things grasp at us, one or the other of those.

[05:38]

So we realize this is a problem, that we're stuck somewhere, so then we come to Zen practice. But then often what happens when we come to Zen practice is then we get stuck to Zen practice. So we're stuck to delusion, then we get stuck to anti-delusion. Getting stuck to Zen practice is very spiritual and very beautiful. And you can write beautiful haiku poems about it. But actually, getting stuck to practice is the same bad idea as getting stuck to anything else. It just looks fancier. So it may be useful for us to think, to understand that enlightenment is just another bad idea.

[06:43]

It's just another bad idea, and our life goes from one bad idea to the next. But this is okay. In fact, this is good. Heaven help us from getting a good idea. Because if we get a good idea, then we get very stuck to this good idea. Then we think, oh, this is really a good idea. This is a terrific idea. You should believe the idea that I have. It's so good. And if you don't believe it, well, I'll hit you over the head with a two-by-four. Then you'll believe it, right? That's the way it happens. To our great misfortune, there are people with a great deal of power who have very good ideas about the way things should be for themselves and everyone else. And they're making a royal mess of the world.

[08:03]

It's not a matter of getting a good idea. As soon as we get good ideas, we should go in the other direction. That's what Nansen meant when he said to Joshu, if you approach it directly, you're going the opposite way. Don't get any good ideas. Forget about them. Bad ideas are good ideas. Bad ideas are the best. That's what, I don't know who it was, but the student said to the teacher, you know, I'm always hot, like I am right now. I'm sweating away here, as you may have noticed. I'm hot for two reasons. One is, you know, I'm a little anxious giving a Dharma talk, you know, putting out some words, you know, will you think I'm as brilliant as I actually am or, you know, will you somehow not appreciate it, et cetera.

[09:12]

Plus, you know, this robe is, this brown robe, the O.K. said, acts as a tent. Even though it is supposedly made out of breathable cotton, it acts as a tent. And when I was at Tassajara this last summer, i was there during the heat spell so during the day it was 108 111 something like that it was hot then in the evening we'd go to zazen and if you if you're in my situation you have to wear one of these things when you go to zazen so It didn't give me something to brag about, so there's that. So after Zazen, my Juban, that's this white one here, this white one here, was soaked through, just like I had jumped into a swimming pool.

[10:15]

But then better than that, in terms of bragging anyway, was that sitting like this, there were two large areas here. where my hands had just sweated away, you know, two large areas of sweat, which I showed to my wife and anyone else who was, look at me, look at how tough I am, right? Sitting zazen, it was only about 85 by that time in the evening. Anyway, the student said to the teacher, Sometimes I'm hot and sometimes I'm cold. How do I get to a place where it's neither hot nor cold? What he wanted was a really good idea. Being hot's a bad idea, being cold's a bad idea. I want a really good idea. I want to get away from either of those. And I believe, my memory is, I'm just going from memory on this story.

[11:26]

I'm remembering it in a couple of ways. One way that I remember it is that the teacher says, when you are hot, kill the heat. When you're cold, kill the cold. Or that's pretty, that may be somewhat esoteric. A more understandable way is when you're hot, be completely hot. when you're cold be completely cold in other words forget all about trying to escape forget about it so to speak you could say that's the way to escape it's not exactly escape but that's the way through is to forget about escaping So the point is not to try to get away from our bad ideas.

[12:35]

The point is to not be stuck by them, to not be stuck with them, to allow them to move through us and to allow ourselves to move through them. This is what Suzuki Roshi called extending our practice.

[13:51]

He said, the point on each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice. This ability to flow and to move with whatever is Whatever of the 10,000 things is blowing our way. That's the spirit of practice. Rather than an emphasis on some particular thing, some particular, like I'm calling it, good idea, some particular teaching. Oh, if I just figure this out, then that will be the key. Then I'll be able to unlock the door. This way there are endless doors, endless locks. They never end. So the teaching of the Four Noble Truths is Dukkha, Samudaya, Nirodha, and Marga.

[15:14]

pervasive unsatisfactoriness. Samudaya is cause, why that is, how that comes to be. That's the one I'm going to come back to. Narodha is extinction, cessation. And Marga is path. Usually it's understood as It's suffering, the cause of suffering, and then the extinction of, there's two ways to understand it. One is the extinction, the end of the cause, the extinction of the cause, and therefore the extinction of suffering, and the path to that end, or extinction of suffering, you know, it's like one, two, three, four, four, one, two, and then extinction and cause of extinction. And in that case, extinction refers to suffering.

[16:21]

So the second noble truth is the cause of suffering. Again, throw a little more Sanskrit your way, is Trishna is usually understood as the cause of suffering. Trishna or tanha in Pali, which means thirst. Literally, it means thirst. Now, here's where I think it kind of goes in two directions. One way we can understand thirst is as desire. Another way we can understand thirst is as clinging or grasping. The misunderstanding that I was referring to that I think is pretty common is the idea that what's supposed to happen in practice is that we're supposed to stop desiring things.

[17:34]

That desire is supposed to be eliminated or minimized, such like that. And there's quite a bit that references that seem to be indicating that. So we talk about non-attachment. Don't be attached to things. Sounds like you're saying, don't want things. Don't be attached to the outcome of things. Or when we receive ordination, we say we're cutting off our attachments. We vow to cut off our attachments. Or the famous Zen poem by Sen Sang, the great way is not difficult. Simply don't have preferences. Simply don't choose things. It sounds like what we're supposed to do is not have preferences.

[18:37]

That's what it says, simply don't have preferences. When likes and dislikes arises, it says in that same poem, the mind is lost in confusion. It sounds like, well, what you're supposed to do then is get rid of these things called likes and dislikes. And if you can't get rid of them, at least suppress them with the greatest intensity you can. Repress them. If you can't, suppress them. Somehow minimize them. They're the bad guys. Likes and dislikes are the bad guys. Desire is the bad guys. We're supposed to move away from that to something else. I feel like this is a misunderstanding, a very common misunderstanding that we have. Why I think it's a misunderstanding

[19:45]

is for three reasons or three bases for understanding it as a misunderstanding. First of all, it's not big enough. Do you know Procrustian bed? It's a terrific word to say, Procrustian, and it's a lot of fun to say it, Procrustian. Do you know the bed of Procrustes? It's a mythic, Greek mythic thing. Procrustean bed, I guess there was a god named Procrustes, he had this bed, and if you were too big for the bed, if you were too small for the bed, he'd stretch you out so that you fit it. If you were too big for the bed, cut off your legs so that you fit into the bed. This is the Procrustean bed. You get the idea? It's like some rigid thing that you have to fit into. Buddhist teaching is not Procrustean bed. Buddhist teaching is Suzuki Roshi, when you want to train an ox, you give it a big pasture.

[20:53]

It's a strange idea, right? You don't corral it. You don't put it into a box in the feedlot. You give it a big pasture. That's the way you train an ox in Zen or a person. So the idea that we're supposed to eliminate our desires is This Procrustean idea, like we're supposed to cut them off, you know? This thing that's quite natural, quite normal, quite usual for us human beings is to desire all kinds of things, starting with life, you know? We desire to live, we desire to breathe, we desire to eat, we desire all kinds of stuff. Secondly, this idea is not Mahayana. Mahayana is, Zen is a school of Buddhism within the Mahayana.

[22:01]

Mahayana means great vehicle. Maha is great yana vehicle, great vehicle school. Now actually historically, the people who coined the term Mahayana were actually quite sectarian and quite non-Mahayana, actually, and they were trying to put down these other people who they called Himayana, you know, this lesser vehicle. We're the greater vehicle, they're the lesser vehicle. So it was kind of, the term actually has a shady history, as it were, but it's still a very valuable term, this Mahayana idea. Mahayana means that the vehicle, it's great, great in both sense of terrific, you know, like, hey, that's really great, and great as large, great as big. So in the Mahayana, in the great vehicle, in the big bus, in the big bus, everybody is welcome on the big bus.

[23:09]

Not just certain people, not just certain... certain feelings, not just certain attitudes, not just certain experiences. Everybody comes along. Buddha nature is welcome on the bus. Come along, you know. Desire is welcome. So in the talk, in this talk called the 100-foot pole talk of Suzuki Roshi, he's talking about, he begins the talk, by speaking about Buddha nature and then suddenly he says evil desires. He says sometimes Buddha nature is You know, sometimes it's Buddha nature, sometimes we call it Buddha nature, and sometimes we call it evil desires.

[24:13]

The same thing, okay? That's not being stuck. Then he says, you want to eliminate your evil desires. I'm just talking about incorporating desire, but he goes further, evil desires, okay? You want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature, he says. This is a very, very common idea of Buddha nature. You get rid of the bad stuff and then you get the good stuff. This is like what I was saying, you want to eliminate your bad ideas in order to have a really good idea. So Suzuki Roshi says, you want to eliminate your evil desires in order to reveal your Buddha nature. But where will you throw them away? When we think that evil desires are something we can throw away, he says, that is heretical.

[25:28]

There is no such thing as evil desires that can be separated out and thrown away. There's not something in the Mahayana, in the vast single unitary Buddha vehicle, there's not something that we throw away. To think so, Suzuki Rishi says, is actually a heresy in Buddhism. He didn't exactly mean heresy because anyway. But anyway, you get the picture, I think. So this is, you know, in Western understanding, this is a very Jungian idea. Jung was very big on this idea of not separating out evil desires and trying to get rid of them.

[26:33]

In Jungian language, this is the conjunction of opposites. Conjunctio oppositorum. when two things come together that look like their opposites. You know, male and female, good and bad, Buddha nature and evil desires. And it's a good thing that we include our desire life and our evil desires in our practice. Because if we excluded them, if we all got on the bus and trundled away and left them, you know, breathing the dust at the bus stop. What happens when we do that is they get angry. They don't like it. Then they come back with various devious plans to blow up the bus. They come back with devious plans to, well, let's see now.

[27:43]

You don't like us, huh? Well, we'll show you. That's what happens when we try to separate them out and get rid of them. And lastly, a third point is that the notion of trying to get rid of our desires or trying to eliminate them, it's also not Mahayana and it's also not Madhyamika. Madhyamika is the Indian scholastic school of Buddhist... thought out of which Zen practice grew. Zen practice is, historically, Zen practice is Indian Buddhism, primarily Madhyamika, Mahayana, Indian Buddhism, mixed together with Daoism, Chinese Daoism, and mostly Daoism, and a little sprinkling in of Confucianism as well.

[29:00]

That's what Zen practice, if you look at the historical roots of it, that's where it comes from. So the great figure, the luminary figure of Madhyamika philosophy was Nagarjuna, the person I mentioned earlier who I don't remember exactly when he lived. Does anyone know when Nagarjuna lived approximately? First century. Thank you, Blanche. So right around the turn of the Christian era. Nagarjuna spoke about shunyata, about emptiness. And emptiness is Madhyamika. Madhyamika literally means middlemost. It means most in the middle. Madhyaya is middle and Mika is a superlative, an emphasizing. So Madhyamika is the middlemost school of Buddhism. This is a recasting, a refreshing of Shakyamuni Buddha's original talk to the five ascetics when he said, our way is the middle way, which in the most narrow sense means, you know, it's usually understood as neither indulgence in sensory pleasures nor asceticism.

[30:24]

He was speaking to the five ascetics and he himself had been practicing asceticism. He had been practicing trying to eliminate his desires, because he didn't like them, he thought they got in the way. He said, no, no, no, that's not right. We have to be in the middle, in the middle between those two, and then in a wider sense, it's not just the middle between sensory exercise and asceticism, but it's in the middle of everything. It's neither, it's not being caught in one direction or another. That is what is most in the middle. Not being caught in evil desires, not being caught in Buddha nature. Not being caught in some idea of how things are.

[31:28]

not being stuck in some idea even of what the teaching is. And why it's called emptiness is because in the middle, there ain't nothing there. There's not anything there in the middle. There's only what's not there. Because as soon as you get to a there, you ain't in the middle anymore. You're slightly off to the side, you know? So that's a way of understanding our practice. Our practice is endlessly going toward the middle and missing. We can't help but miss because we're human beings. We have karmic life. We're always missing. But we're always returning, returning to the middle. So we return to our breath when we... are sitting, zazen. That's the same thing, returning, returning, returning.

[32:31]

I think Uchiama Roshi called it sheepdoll zen. He meant you're supposed to go straight ahead, but you never go straight ahead. Like sheep, you go kind of this way. Then the sheepdog comes around, goes, woof, [...] gets you back in track, right? Do you go straight? Not a chance. You start going that way, diagonally that way. Sheepdog has to come along, woof, [...] you know? It's always like that. Sheepdog. Sheepdog Zen, there isn't any Zen that's straight away. There isn't any such thing. This is just a figment of our imagination, some straight path. We can imagine it. but it's foolish to try and live it. And when we are stuck with it, when that is what being stuck is, is when we're on some straight line instead of always veering off, always off course, always doing course correction. So what I would offer as an alternative to the idea that we are somehow supposed to, that the point is somehow supposed to be to minimize, reduce, eliminate, otherwise get rid of somehow or another our life of desire, what I would offer as an alternative to that is the notion of harmony.

[34:08]

Harmony like the sound of a grandfather clock, like the sound of a garbage truck. Harmony. Harmonizing our life, harmonizing our life of desire. One of the things that we recite frequently at Zen Center is the meditation on loving kindness. And we say, how does it go? May I, may we, may one not be submerged by the things of the world. May I not be submerged by the things of the world. May I be contented and joyous even with few possessions. May I not wish for great possessions even for my family. This is hard. This is based on a notion of harmonizing our life.

[35:23]

Harmonizing means to take everything in, not to exclude anything, to take everything in and work with it as one harmonious whole. This is a very ecological idea. It's a very ecological practices ecological. Gregory Bateson spoke about the principle of optima as an ecological principle rather than the principle of maxima. Optima is when everything works together. This harmony includes a lot of disharmony. Disharmony. The harmony includes disharmony. Otherwise it would not be real harmony. It would be this kind of good idea that I was talking about. It would be separating things out. That's the way it is ecologically, right? There's a forest or there's a whatever, you know, and this guy eats that guy and, you know, various things happen.

[36:33]

But it's one harmonious whole that optimizes the situation rather than one thing being maximized. I'm in charge. You guys all work for me, you know. rather than that kind of maximizing of our ego. So, maybe this would be a, maybe so, this would be not always so, but maybe so, this would be a useful way to Think about our life of desire, not as some attempt to cut it away, as troublesome as it is. It's very troublesome. Nevertheless, not eliminate it, reject it, but rather bring it in and

[37:42]

Harmonize body and mind. Harmonize with other people. Harmonize with our environment. To harmonize is not to be stuck at the top of a hundred foot pole. So I want to say something about that story and Suzuki Rishi's interpretation of it, too. So the original story is, the original 100-foot pole story has to do, it's in the Mumonkan and also in the Shoyoroku. It has to do with these two Zen teachers, Changsha and Hui. They were both students of another teacher whose name was Nanchuang. After Nanchuan died, they went their separate ways and so on.

[38:45]

And the story is that Changsha said to one of his students, go over to Hui, go over to Hui, I don't know how far away that was, and ask him two questions. First say to him, what was it like before Nanchuan? And then, whatever he says, then say, what was it like after Nanchuan? So the student goes and does that, and he says to Hui, what was it like before Nanquan? Hui is silent. He says, what was it like after Nanquan? And there are different translations, different versions of what he says, but one version says, Hui said, after Nanquan, nothing special. So he goes back, and he tells Changsha this. This is what Hui said when I asked him.

[39:48]

So I have to interpolate here a little bit, interpret something. What Changsha understood Hui to be saying or expressing was some attainment. Hui was expressing, according to Changsha, some attainment of equality. That's what nothing special refers to. A kind of... being above it all. No difference. No difference before Nanquan, no difference after Nanquan. It's all copacetic, man. Something like that, okay? That's what Changsha understood. So what Changsha said then is, well, that's pretty good. But Hui has to jump off the top of a 100-foot pole. In other words, he has to go further than just enlightenment. In the language I'm using today, essentially, Changsha was saying, well, Hui has a very good idea, but good ideas aren't good enough.

[40:56]

He's got to leap into something further than that, even though it took him a lot of work to get to the top of that pole. It's a lot of work climbing a 100-foot pole. He's got to take one more step, whoop, off the top, into the realm of evil desires. Chansha didn't say that. That's me. But that's what he meant, I think. He's got to go further. He's got to go back into the world of evil desires. He can't just be hanging out in this nothing special land. Not good enough. So that's the original story. Now, Suzuki Roshi, I think pretty characteristically, took this story and made it very universal, not just about, because the story is kind of like, you know, one way to talk about the original story is, it's like, even though you've attained enlightenment, you must go beyond it, something like that.

[42:06]

But Suzuki Rishi talked about it in a way where he just meant Whatever you're stuck, wherever you're stuck, you need to go beyond it. So he used a very mundane example. He said, this is in this fourth talk, and it's very funny. I recommend it. He said, my wife, Mrs. Suzuki, Okasan we used to call her, when it's breakfast time, she hits the clappers, because I might be someplace else in the building or, you know, something like that. So she'll hit the clappers to tell me that it's time to come to breakfast. And then I go to breakfast. But sometimes I'm doing something really important. You know, I'm studying sutras or I'm thinking of, you know,

[43:07]

wonderful things to tell people at my next Dharma talk, or I'm doing some important stuff and I don't want to go to breakfast. Then he says, this is staying at the top of the 100-foot pole. This is getting stuck in some idea of my own importance. And then he further says, I think sometimes when she hits the clappers and I think to myself, well, I don't want to go to breakfast. I'm doing important things here and I'm not going to go. She knows that I'm thinking that and that I've heard the clappers and that I'm refusing to come. So then she hits them harder, you know, some more. So he says, the point of practice is to just say yes and go to breakfast. like that, not to be stuck in some idea.

[44:12]

He says, forget all about the top of the pole. To forget the top of the pole means to be where you are right now. This is Shikantaza. Forget this moment and grow into the next. That is the only way. And then as I said before, he says, the point on each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice. Forget all about the top of the pole. forget about the good ideas. The point is to extend our practice into the next moment, to be ready for the next moment.

[45:20]

Not some eliminating, not some pushing away. I love that last sentence. The point on each moment is to forget the point and extend your practice. This is the practice of harmony and the practice of not being stuck. So, I do have three more things to say. I'm sorry. I'll try to be brief. I have three points to make about practicing this. Because often what happens is when you talk, when one speaks about the nature of practice, then naturally somebody says, well, how do I do it?

[46:29]

Sounds really good. How do I do that, you know? So here are three. I'm now going to tell you how to do it. So number one is, Dogen says, if you want to attain suchness, practice suchness without delay. This is a very good paradigm to use. If you want to practice harmony, if you want to attain harmony, practice harmony right now. Don't wait. until the circumstances are more propitious. When you're feeling calm and harmonious and, you know, what's that word? It's one of the four unlimited equanimity. When you're feeling great equanimity, don't wait until you're feeling equanimity. If you want to practice harmony, if you want to attain harmony, if you want to be in that place, do that right now.

[47:34]

It's sort of a very blunt kind of idea. It's a non-shortcut idea. If you want to practice such, if you want to attain suchness, practice suchness right now. It's an extremely simple idea. But there's no shortcuts to it. It's just, if you want that, do that. It's the long cut. no shortcut, the longest cut. So that's one thing. Second is, we often speak about letting go of attachments, letting go, or the way I was speaking about it today, not getting caught, not getting stuck to something. But actually, I think, to a great extent, it's not really a matter of me sticking to something.

[48:48]

It's something sticking to me. Psychologically speaking, it's not so much that I stick to some idea, because that would lead to the idea, that would lead to the sense of, well, if you're just sticking to it, just let go of it, you know, as though you had charge of it as though you had control over whether you could let go of it or not. It's not that way usually. The most troublesome things are the ones that stick to us and won't let go. So the second point that I want to make about how to practice it is that maybe it may be more useful for us to think about how do we create the conditions under which it lets go of us. which usually are not hitting it over the head with a baseball bat, right? It's usually not, get out of here, I don't want you, I don't want you.

[49:49]

That's terribly ineffective in having it let go of us. Whatever the it might be, whatever the karmic it might be, to create the circumstances under which it's willing to let go of us so that we're free of it. That's the second point. And the third point is, this is difficult to do. It's true in the realm of, you know, in the Dharma realm of undifferentiated Buddha nature, there is no such thing as easy or difficult. Setting that aside for the moment, in this human realm, in this place where we usually are, it's simply difficult to do.

[50:51]

It's difficult to let go of things, and it's difficult to create the conditions where they let go of us. And again, I'm talking about the obstinate ones. The easy ones are easy to let go of. But those are not usually the ones that cause us much trouble. The ones that cause us trouble are the ones that just hold on. And it's difficult to change that. It's difficult to move to a different place, to have a different relationship. So one of the reasons I say that it's difficult is that it then explains why we are so frequently unsuccessful. Now, if this doesn't apply to you, good. If you're mostly successful, you know. But for many of us, we're mostly unsuccessful in our attempts to practice.

[51:54]

You know, like 90% unsuccessful. Like 99% unsuccessful. like 99.9 and so on and so forth, you know. We're usually unsuccessful. So we have, for many of us, we have a very handy reason why we're unsuccessful. I'm unsuccessful because I'm not good at it. I'm a terrible practitioner. What's more, I'm probably a terrible person. Joe over there, Mary over there, look, they know how to do it. but I don't know how to do it. I can't do this thing. They sure look good over there. Like in AA, they say, don't compare your insides to somebody else's outsides, but we always do. Oh, that looks good. They look like they know how to do it. So the only reason I can think of why I am so phenomenally unsuccessful is it must reflect on how terrible a practitioner I am.

[53:09]

I must really stink at this thing called practice. Which doesn't surprise me at all because I'm not really very good at anything else either. So this is an alternative explanation as to why you're unsuccessful to that, okay? And I think it's actually, not only is it an alternative, but it's true. The other one is not true. that you or I are really just terrible practitioners is not the case. The case is that it's goddamn hard to do. So in the face of that, we practice generosity and patience. Thank you.

[54:13]

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