This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. In the chant that we just recited, we spoke of an unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma. And the Dharma is a Sanskrit word for the teaching or truth. An unsurpassed teaching or an unsurpassed truth is rarely met with. We also call this Dharma Buddha Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha or the truth of the Buddhas, the truth of awakened ones. And at the end of that, chant, we said, I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words.

[01:05]

And the word Tathagata is an epithet for the Buddha. It means the one who comes from the truth or goes to the truth and comes from the truth. The one who is living in communion with the highest and deepest truth, Tathagata. In the great scripture called the Nirvana scripture, the Tathagata, the Buddha is speaking, and the Buddha says something like, there are reasons...

[02:09]

that the Tathagata teaches, quote, no self, unquote. There are reasons that the Tathagata teaches no self as part of the Buddhadharma. And then the Buddha, the Tathagata, goes on to say, it is because I need, in my Buddha work, I need to straighten out the thinking consciousness of living beings.

[03:16]

then the Buddha goes on to say there are also reasons why the Tathagata teaches the presence of self many people who have heard the Buddha's teachings have only heard the part about no self in the Nirvana Sutra we hear the teaching of no-self and we hear about what it's used for. But we also hear the Buddha also teaches, the Buddha also proclaims the presence of self. So in the early teachings of the Buddha, the Buddha met with people whose thinking consciousness misunderstood what things are, how things are.

[04:53]

And they imagined a self which does not exist. And this caused all kinds of suffering. The Buddha then came and taught them that the self that they imagined which they projected on themselves and others, was a misunderstanding. And after hundreds of years of teaching, of refuting living beings' ideas about self, now the Buddha comes and says, I also, now that you're free of your ideas of self, your misunderstandings of self, now I teach you self. And what do I mean? What's the self I'm talking about? Anything, any phenomena that is true, that is real, that is permanent, that is immutable, that is autonomous, anything like that, I call self.

[06:02]

The Buddha says, I do teach no self, but it is not true that I teach no self. Or, I teach no self, but in truth, I do not teach there is no self. I often think about there being three basic kinds of minds that we live in, that we live with.

[07:20]

One is the, what I would call, conscious mind or consciousness, which is self-consciousness, which is egocentric consciousness. which is egotistical or egoistic consciousness. This is one of the minds that are our life. Our life is egocentric consciousness. That's part of our life. It's a life that we're conscious of. It's the part of our life we're conscious of. It's our consciousness of our life. And in this consciousness there is a self. But for most of us, the self that's there is something we don't understand very well. Well, that we misunderstand.

[08:27]

And I might come back to discussing this situation which I call consciousness. But before I do, I want to mention two other minds that are our life. Another mind is what we might call the unconscious mind. It's a mind which, for example, it has tremendous abilities. For example, it can conjure up stories every moment. It conjures up a story about what's going on. And it feeds this story, it has the story within itself, but it transmits this story of what's going on to the conscious mind. The conscious mind does not make up the stories of what's going on. The conscious mind doesn't, I do not consciously imagine all you people in this room. I can't, it's too much work to make each one of your faces and all your hairdos and outfits, I can't do it.

[09:36]

But the unconscious mind is incredibly rich and capable of seeing all this information and making all these different coats and all these jackets with all those little pockets, those little puff pockets. It can see all that and make up that jacket and then that jacket and then feed that story that these are the people in the room with these outfits on to my consciousness. I can't consciously do that. But I received the fruits. of this incredibly rich unconscious process, moment after moment after moment. And it also includes you scratching your face, and you scratching your hair, and smiling, and you nodding, and you moving, all that stuff, and you shaking your head, and you touching your face. This is fed to me by a very, you could say, a brilliant, a brilliant mind which is in darkness from the point of view of conscious mind.

[10:41]

I'm not conscious of this, but I understand that it is feeding me. And the stories is feeding me right now. Feeding me means feeding the consciousness where me is. I'm not aware of how it puts this stuff together. I'm unaware of it consciously. But I've learned about it, and I watch the fruits of its activity moment after moment. So my life is this mind, too. This mind also does things like putting out a story of three-dimensional space. It creates this sense of three-dimensional space, which I'm not consciously creating three-dimensional space. It's given to me by the workings of this... unconscious process and the unconscious process uses the body in concert to produce this so for example if you close your eyes you can't see three-dimensional space matter of fact if you cover one eye you lose it but with two eyes open that

[11:52]

That body together with this unconscious process creates three-dimensional space, three-dimensional space, three-dimensional space, or two-dimensional space if you close one eye, or two-dimensional space if you close both. That's another activity of the unconscious process. It also signals to release hormones. I don't know how. Some people do, maybe. I don't know how to produce and secrete and initiate the production of hormones. but the unconscious does it. It also can modify heartbeat and so on. It's amazing, but I'm not consciously aware of it. And it's living together with the conscious mind. And it's living together with your unconscious mind. And there's a third mind, which is what we call wisdom, wisdom mind. It understands what's going on in the conscious mind. It understands that... If the conscious mind is in a state of misunderstanding, it understands that.

[12:57]

And also it understands the conscious mind. And it understands the relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. And it understands the relationship between all conscious minds, all conscious beings. It understands the way things really are. It understands what we're actually doing. One of the things that it understands we're doing... is it understands that we are all becoming Buddhas. It understands that we're in the process of waking up to reality and seeing our delusions for what they are. That's one of the things wisdom understands. And wisdom is a very happy mind because it sees this wonderful path we're on. But it also sees our misunderstandings, just like they are. And again, since I imagine that you are like me, that you're aware of your consciousness, that your consciousness is something you are in, you are in your consciousness, you yourself are living in this consciousness, you're aware of it, so I can talk to you about it and you might be able to see what I'm talking about.

[14:20]

So in this consciousness, yeah, we have problems. Consciousness is a problem area. It's a problem area, but it's also a problem-solving area. It's a better problem-solving area than the unconscious. And the unconscious process feeds problems to the consciousness for the consciousness to solve. And the consciousness may be up for it, but often the consciousness needs quite a bit of encouragement to do it because it's a lot of work to solve the problems. And the consciousness is somewhat lazy because it's afflicted often by laziness. But it can also be stimulated to be enthusiastic about doing the work of solving the problems which are in it.

[15:24]

So part of the Buddhist teaching is to teach no self to help people figure out what the self is. So this consciousness, which again, I propose we are consciously aware, it has the self in it, and there is a deep tendency, in this consciousness to view others and self, but to view others in an egocentric way. And viewing others in an egocentric way kind of falls into two different modes. One mode is to see them as extensions of our self. To see others as an extension of myself is an egocentric view of others.

[16:39]

Another view of others is to see them as alien to myself or ourselves. And seeing them as alien, then they're available for manipulation and attempts to control and exploit them. And this is at a group level, I mean at personal level and group level. So at the group level or societal level, I can see others as extensions of myself. That's one egocentric way to do it. The other is as alien to myself and my group. So myself and my group then can exploit these aliens and try to control them and manipulate them. That's an egocentric view of others. You get it? Mine, part of me, and alien, opportunities for others. exploitation, slavery, control, getting some advantage from them because they're aliens.

[17:48]

Of course, neither one of these approaches really do justice to others. You are not an extension of myself. and you're not something alien either. But that's a normal situation in egocentric consciousness. The Buddha's teaching is for that consciousness, to free that consciousness from those inclinations, those harmful inclinations. Another way to describe this conscious space, this conscious enclosure, is to say, as Vasubandhu, the ancestor Vasubandhu says, whenever this consciousness arises, which has a self, misunderstood self, there is four afflictions.

[19:04]

And the first affliction that I've mentioned is the affliction of misunderstanding the self, of self-ignorance. Not understanding the sense of self is an affliction. It is painful. It is distressing. It gives rise to fear. That's the first affliction. Next affliction is... view and view in one sense I think is more traditional which is simply the view that this is so so one is a misunderstanding a confusion that's one affliction the other affliction is the belief that this thing actually exists not just that it seems to exist the self so self consciousness does have self but the self doesn't exist the way we think it does

[20:05]

So the way we think it exists, to believe that it is the way we think it exists, is called self-belief, self-view. But another meaning of that, I think, is that in consciousness, it seems like the view is from the self towards the other. That's another kind of view. But again, that's confusion, too. Those are the first two afflictions that the ancestors say come up with this consciousness. moment after moment, affliction. Self-view, self-confusion. Self-view, self-confusion. That comes up over and over. The next one is self-esteem, or basically self-pride. And in a way, it seems like, well, yeah, this is something to be proud of. This is like a a major accomplishment for the empire of delusion.

[21:07]

This misconception I've created is like top-of-the-line delusion. And you can be proud of that. You've made a little monster. Not a monster. You've imagined a monster. That's a great accomplishment. Yeah, okay. I did that. And yeah, I did that. So there's that. And that's an affliction. That pride is an affliction. It's distressing. It's nice to be proud, but it's sad that it's so afflictive, so painful to be proud. It's painful to be proud. Number four, self-love. We love it. And we want to get more of it. And we want to get more of it. And we want to get more of it.

[22:09]

And we want to possess it. And we want to get more of it. Have you noticed that one? I heard on the radio an ad for, excuse me, for saying, well, no, I'm not going to say it. For a club. I'm not going to say which one. Because that might not be kind. Maybe this one, I'll try to say this kindly. The ad was basically, at this club you'll get more. of this, and more of that, and more of that, and more of that, and more of that. It's all this stuff. You're going to get more of more, more than any other club you'll get at this club. That was the ad. And a lot of people go, oh, yeah. And then this club costs like $4,000, $8,000 a year. I heard one guy talking in a kind of poverty club I was in. I heard somebody talking about somebody who was a member of this other club and his family membership was $20,000 a year. But they get more, so they'll pay. Anyway, that's an affliction too.

[23:12]

And we all have that more, more, more in there. More, more, more of this. More, more, more for this. More, more, more for this. More, more for this and the extensions of this. More, more, more for our country. This is an affliction. which comes naturally to our consciousness. Want to hear more about more afflictions? Is that enough or you want more? Enough? Okay. So, there's more, but I'll get to them later. For now, I just want to say that For a while now, when I've been giving talks, I've been emphasizing that everything that we're aware of, consciously at least, everything we're aware of is calling to us.

[24:17]

Everything in our consciousness is calling. And everything in our consciousness about others like these puff jackets and the long and short hair and the faces and the hands and the lights and the walls. Everything that I'm aware of is calling for compassion. It's not just calling to me. It's calling for compassion. And I can listen to the calls. So in this situation of... being a living being and having an afflicted self-consciousness, we can hear cries there. And matter of fact, everything we hear is a cry, is a call for compassion. And all the afflictions I feel and all the afflictions I see other people feeling and everything they say to me and every face they offer me and every gesture they offer to me,

[25:25]

They're calling for compassion. And everything in my mind, in my conscious mind, is calling for compassion. All my misunderstandings, all my silliness, all my delusion, are calling for compassion. For listening, first of all. And then, from the listening, there's calling. And from the listening, there is awakening to that when there's listening, there's also calling. And then there's awakening to that listening and calling are always happening in everything. That everything's calling for compassion and everything's listening. And there's awakening to that. And in this awakening, we awaken to the delusions of consciousness. We awaken to, first of all, We start to awaken by listening to the call that our misconceptions of self are offering to us.

[26:33]

We listen to the call of our self-love, which calls to us when it hears about more, more. We learn to listen and then we gradually wake up to a correct understanding. of this self, which is that this self, this one that we've been thinking about, what we've been thinking about as the self, does not exist. There is no such self that corresponds in reality to the self that we imagine, that is being imagined, that is being fed into our consciousness. There's no such self like that. There is the appearance of that self, but if you look at it deeply, it doesn't exist. It's actually just a misunderstanding of our life. However, the misunderstanding, fortunately, calls for help.

[27:35]

And when there's listening to it, a conversation starts to develop. And in that conversation, awakening is living. Buddha is... the conversation between our misunderstanding between our belief in the reality of something that's an illusion and the suffering that they entail and the calling that they're going the conversation between the listener and the caller that conversation is awakening and it's not that the Buddha is over here listening to us deluded beings calling for compassion The Buddha is the interaction between our call and being listened to, and between our listening and being called to. When you, or when there is listening to the cries in your own consciousness, and the cries, that conversation is the real Buddha, which is nothing in itself,

[28:57]

other than liberation from adhering to either side of the story. So the ancestors have described the problem area, which is the problem-solving area. The problem area where all these afflictions are living is the same place where the problem of the afflictions is solved. The problems are solved there, and then there is freedom from that and opening to the fullness of our life.

[30:05]

which includes opening to the fullness of our unconscious process, the fullness of our body, and the fullness of our wisdom. And Buddha first taught no-self to these consciousnesses to start the process of studying the problem. So I'm thinking now whether I tell you the story from the Nirvana Sutra. Because this teaching that the Buddha sometimes teaches na-self and sometimes teaches self, that teaching follows up on a story. The story, the name of it, the story is called

[31:12]

The milk medicine. Milk in Minnesotan, milk in other languages. Milk medicine. So I wonder if I should tell the milk medicine story. What? Louder. Louder. Oh, it's 10 to 11. What did you say? anyway I don't want to talk too long so I could stop and tell the milk story during question and answer should I do that pardon alright the milk medicine is particularly a probably happy thing for vegans to hear about

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For more information, visit sfzc.org and click Giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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