This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So when I was realizing I needed to come to Tassajara and do a lot of talking, I thought, well, I better have a lot to talk about. So I'm going to talk about everything. Uh... Thank you. As I said in the introductory talk, this first month I was going to focus on the first turning teachings, which are basically beginning with what the Buddha had to say following his awakening.

[01:14]

All right, challenge. You probably can't all see that, can you? Well, I'll tell you what it says. So in a sense, our commitment here, what we're doing here, begins with the Buddha's enlightenment, but that isn't the beginning. So I think it's important to remember that causes and conditions are beginningless, and the Buddha didn't just pop up out of nowhere. Just like I said, Zen doesn't pop up out of nowhere. There are causes and conditions that result in these practices, these understandings. So the story of the Buddha's arrival is begins with a monk by the name of Sumedha, who infinite numbers of kalpas ago was quite a magician. And he was preparing for the arrival of a Buddha by the name of Deepankara. And he was so inspired by Deepankara that even though Sumedha was capable of exiting samsara, of becoming an arhat, he chose not to do that.

[02:26]

Because he could see that only a Buddha could really help the most people by not leaving, not abandoning living beings. So Sumedha made a vow, the Bodhisattva vow. This is in the Pali Canon. And he promised not to end the cycle of rebirth until he became a Buddha. And I mentioned the Jataka tales. In my first talk, like 547, these are all lifetimes of the Buddha, of this yogi who came back again and again as an elephant, as a deer, as a woman, as a king, as a servant, again and again to learn lessons that he needed to learn about compassion and kindness and so on, and insight. And at the end of those many, many lifetimes, he was born as a baby by the name of Shakyamuni. So Shakyamuni Buddha has this very long inheritance. And another thing to remember is that Buddha is not a person.

[03:28]

It's a quality. It was a quality of all of these living beings that created this tremendous generous spirit and kindness and so on. So these are qualities. And when the Buddha, Shakyamuni, was asked, what are you? Are you a god? He said, no. Are you a demon? He said, no. Are you a water spirit? He said, no. Are you a human being? He said, no. He said, well, then what are you? He said, I'm awake. I'm awake. It's a quality. Okay? So, Buddhist enlightenment, or in other words, true knowledge, we could say Buddhist enlightenment is true knowledge, knowing. This kind of knowing, the word prajna and know come from the same source. nya, to know. True knowing, true wisdom, is the right understanding of the true nature of reality. That's Buddhist enlightenment.

[04:32]

It's knowing, not just conceptually knowing, it's knowing with your entire being what's true. So, another way of saying Buddhist enlightenment is the first of the Eightfold Path, right view. Right view is Buddhist enlightenment. is understanding the true nature of reality. So then we want to know, how do you do that? How do you come to that understanding? So we do the same practice that the Buddha did. The eighth fold of the Eightfold Path is right meditation. Samyak Samadhi. Samyak Samadhi. This word Samadhi. Dogen says Samadhi. Sitting upright in Samadhi. So right meditation, enables us to reveal, to realize right view, the Buddhist enlightenment. Okay, so far? So one thing I wanted to point out as well is this samyak samadhi, that word samadhi, is an entry.

[05:36]

Samadhi is kind of like an entry gate to jhanas. Do you all know the term jhana, the trances, the trances in the form realm, trances in the formless realm? So I'm going to talk about those next class, but basically the jhanas, the word jhana, when the Chinese studied the Buddhist teaching, they pronounced that chana, chan. And when the Japanese studied in China, they pronounced chana, zena, zen. So we have our roots of the Zen tradition are in these trances, these meditation practices. The two main aspects, traditionally, of meditation are shamatha and vipassana. I know we all know vipassana. There's a whole, you know, right up the road from us at Green Gulch, there's the spirit rock. Vipassana students of vipassana. And shamatha is this calming the mind, this tranquility practice.

[06:41]

So it's important to remember... As nice as shamatha is, to be tranquil, to be calm, to be in these higher jhanic trances, as the Buddha said in his own journey to enlightenment, this is not the way. You can't live there. You can't live at the top of Everest. You have to come down, and everything comes down. There are no permanent states. So... You know, to recognize that this is not the way. However, it's a tool, and it's a very important tool, for calming ourselves in order to have insight, vipassana. And insight into what? Into the true nature of reality. So that's our assignment. Okay? Easy. So then the question I would ask you all is, so you're all practicing calming. This is a wonderful place to practice being calm. I often describe the difference between a calm mind and an anxious or disturbed mind.

[07:46]

It's like riding a horse, a trot. If your mind is disturbed, what do the mountains look like? They look like they're jumping. So the world's jumping when your mind is jumping. When you calm down, get off the horse, the mountains are still. So we want to have that still mind in order to study reality. in order to observe the real, calming the mind, observing the real, shamatha vipassana. Okay, so far? Anything that I say that you would like me to say again or whatever, just raise your hand, please. So then I ask you all, what do you see when you look at your minds? What have you noticed? Are you noticing? Is it of interest to you? So part of the invitation is to really pay attention to the appearances in your mind. That's really all you've got. So you're paying attention to those and analyzing your experiences, which is what the Buddha was doing under the Bodhi tree.

[08:50]

He was analyzing his experience. If you looked at the Buddha sitting there under the tree, you wouldn't have seen much. Kind of a boring thing for seven days, this person sitting there. What was he seeing? You remember his story? There was an army that came charging at him, and there were these dancing boys and girls who were trying to tempt him off his seat. And Mara, the evil one, showed up and said he was going to destroy him. So what's going on there? It's not an external, visible manifestation. It's a product of his imagination, and that's what he came to understand. When Mara said, I'll destroy you, the Buddha said, you will not destroy me because I know who you are. You are myself. And then Mara, the master of illusion, vanished. So we're dreamers. We're very good at it. We're magicians, and we're creating this entire world out of our imagination.

[09:50]

It's how we've managed to survive as a species, and it's how we've managed to dominate the world, and we are going too far. So we've got to come back from the brink of destroying ourselves by how clever we are. So that's part of what this teaching is helping us to realize. We've gone too far. So what did the Buddha see when he analyzed his experience? Well, he told us what he saw, and it's called the first turning of the wheel of the law, his first sermon. What he saw were four noble truths. And these truths are not truths like, oh, that's something I believe. It's truth about reality. It's true. what he saw, that reality is like this. The true nature of reality are the four noble truths. Okay? So another important feature of his first sermon, this is his first talk to the five ascetics, is his mention of, in his very first sentence, the middle way.

[10:57]

Very good for us. You know, you can see how all of the... Commentarial traditions and philosophical schools are riffing off of this first sermon. The middle way, Majamaka, Nagarjuna, second Buddha. He's just elaborating on something that the Buddha said and realized when he woke up. So I wanted to read to you that sermon. Have all of you read the first sermon? Has anyone read the first sermon? A long time ago. Do you mind if I read it to you? It's not very long. It's not like the Mahayana Sutras. We'd be here for days. Okay. Setting, rolling the wheel of the law. Monks, there are these two extremes that ought not to be cultivated by one who has gone forth. These two extremes. Which two? There's devotion to the pursuit of pleasure.

[11:58]

in sensual desires, which is low, coarse, vulgar, ignoble, and harmful. And there is devotion to self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble, and harmful. The middle way, discovered by a perfect one, avoids both of these extremes. It gives vision, knowledge, and it leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to nirvana. And what is the middle way? It is this noble eightfold path. That is to say, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. Okay, and then he goes on to name these four noble truths. Bless you. There is the noble truth of suffering.

[13:00]

Oh, number two. Slide number two. It's like my PowerPoints. Vona White. Yeah, let's keep that one there. I think you need to put it on the glass too. Thank you. All right. Four Noble Truths. There is this noble truth of suffering. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering. Sickness, death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering. Association with the loathed is suffering. Dissociation from the loved is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering. In short, the five categories... affected by clinging are suffering. Those are the five skandhas. The five categories affected by clinging are suffering.

[14:04]

So that's the first noble truth. There is this noble truth of the origin of suffering. It is craving, which produces renewal of being, is accompanied by relish and lust, relishing this and that. In other words, craving for sensual desire, craving for being, craving for non-being, Number three, there is this noble truth of the cessation of suffering. It is the remainderless, fading and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go, and rejecting of that same craving. Letting go. Number four, there is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. It is this noble eightfold path. That is to say... right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration. In other words, it's how you live your life. Okay, so I wanted to just go over these a little bit.

[15:12]

And again, please, you're welcome to ask anything. So the Four Noble Truths, the first three, which are here, are a theoretical frame based in causality. So causality is a really important element, again, of the philosophical schools that come after the Buddha, but also the Buddha's own insight. Suffering is caused. It's caused. There are causes and conditions that lead to suffering. So these first two, one and two, are also called samsara, because we keep repeating these patterns, trying to get it right. Maybe this time she won't leave me. Maybe this time the ice cream won't melt. Every time we try again and again and again to make something last, including ourselves. Maybe I won't die if I take that medicine or I don't take that medicine, whatever. So we're trying all the time negotiating with impermanence.

[16:12]

So there's three kinds or three varieties of suffering that the Buddha named in his sermon. The first one is the obvious suffering of pain, a broken leg, no doubt about it. You know, a poison oak, a broken heart. I mean, these are all obvious forms of pain, and we all know them and have gone through them. And this is not the kind of suffering that the Buddha had much to say about. Good luck. Take some ibuprofen, whatever. But these two are the ones that actually are negotiable. So why do you think pleasure is under suffering? Goes away. Goes away. You know, doesn't it? Have you noticed? Doesn't last. No matter what it is, it doesn't last.

[17:15]

So you try it again. Try it again. That's the thing. You remember Pinocchio being caught over on Pleasure Island? It was called Pleasure Island. And there was candy and toys, and all the kids went over there to play. And what happened to them? They became donkeys. They became donkeys, and Stromboli was using them to bring his diamonds or something out of the mines. And Pinocchio had these big donkey ears, right? So Pleasure Island. And... The problem with pleasure is it is transient, unlike joy. Joy is cultivation. Joy is learning. Joy is maturing. Joy is something that comes from effort, from investing yourself and caring for ideas or caring for things. So joy is not subject to transiency in the same way that pleasure is. It is also, but in much... more sustaining and human.

[18:17]

It's more of a human value. Great. Oh. Okay. I like that. I share that with you. Why is this table here? I'm sorry. I keep trying to get out of my own way. Maybe just put it right behind me. I need the water, too. Okay. All right. And the last one is conditions. Basically, our lives are conditioned by the truth is that there's suffering. It's just the way it is. And we're not in charge. We are not in control. We do not know what's going to happen next. What rock's going to fall down off the mountain or what tree limb is going to come crashing down.

[19:20]

I was standing out at this coffee tea area when I was tanking years and years, now decades ago, and there was this funny thing that happened. Right over here was a giant oak tree, and next to the giant oak tree was a giant rock. Well, two days before this thing, I'm going to tell you, That giant rock was in the middle of the path. And we're all, not being too bright, going like, why is that giant rock in the middle of the path? How did that happen? So I'm standing there at the cafetiere, and I hear this, and the giant oak tree goes right into this courtyard here. My first tree fall. I'm like, okay, I believe. Our dog, Zori, was really close to it. I thought for sure that he'd been killed, but he just came running out, you know. And one of the students who was in his bed sick that day had just gone to the bath, and the branch went right through his bed.

[20:21]

I know, I know. Somebody's watching out for us. They've got to be, because we're not that good. So, anyway, conditions are not under our control, you know. And so this is suffering. We really want them to be. We want to get it under control. We're constantly manipulating things, trying to get them under control. All right, so that's suffering. Oh, an important thing to realize and think about and notice in yourself, it is not the object that's causing your suffering. It's not that person that you're in love with who won't look at you. It's not those women that had to be expelled from the monasteries that were causing the monks to suffer. Or the ice cream, again I said. Or anybody. The problem is your attachment to what you think you have to have. The problem is in your own head. But that's very hard to realize. That's a big realization. My suffering is in here.

[21:23]

It's not the object. We blame. We tend to externalize blame. This great little card, there's a picture of an owl and it says, in my defense, it's your fault. I'm going to post to the Gringo. All right. So, you know, it's attachment that's the problem. Even attachment to useful things like the Buddhist teaching. And the Buddha said that it's a raft to take you across the ocean of suffering. But when you get to the other side, don't carry the raft with you. You don't start walking. So we don't want attachment is the problem. Attachment. So that's here in Noble Truth Number Two. Causes and Condition. So in one of the very famous teachings of the Buddha, the Dhammapada, you know, what we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday. Our current thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is a creation of our mind. Our mind. She beat me. He hit me.

[22:25]

They hate me. They're mistreating me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. The only way you're free from hate is to end hating. You have to stop hating. You can't end it by manipulating the world outside. So causes and conditions for suffering, the two that are named and are also primary to the 12-fold chain of dependent core rising, which I'll go over next time, which is this circle here. starts with ignorance. Ignorance is the first of the 12-fold chain. You'll be fine if you just get this. You won't have any more problems. If you understand the true nature of reality, you don't have to keep flipping out like that. But until you do, you will enter into this spiral again and again. Samsara means endless circling. So starting with ignorance, which is one of the... One of the weak links, you can break the chain there, but it's harder to do.

[23:29]

The weakest link is the one of desire. You can actually stop at feelings, which is the one before desire. You have a feeling. I want that. The picture on the 12-fold chain of feelings is of a person with an arrow in their eye. Ah! Do you feel it? Oh, I feel it. I feel it. I really feel it. So you feel it. And then you want to do something about it. If you just stop at feelings, which is part of what I think zazen is all about, is training us to stop at feelings. And notice that they subside all on their own. You don't have to do anything. They go away. I was really upset about something. I think it was that Supreme Court thing. When I went to zazen the other morning, I was like... And then by second period, I was like, well, what the heck... Another bad bit of history to digest, indigest.

[24:31]

So desire and ignorance. Ignorance of what? Ignorance of the true nature of reality. What is the true nature of reality? Well, there are three marks to reality that are true. One is there's no self. There's nothing in there. There's just these five skandhas. There's no body home. There's not a singularity called me, even though I talk like that. And the Buddha talked like that. You'll never find that singularity that claims its need to have this and have that. It's a fantasy, and it's a very dangerous one. So there is no self. Everything is impermanent. There's no abiding objects or anything. It's all just... And there is suffering. There is. That's the nature of reality. It's one of the marks of conditioned existence, is suffering. So these three are the three marks of all conditioned phenomena. And by ignoring those, by being in denial about the truth of reality, we do this over and over and over.

[25:34]

Okay? So this dotted line represents the good news. From here down, Robin, could you bring number three? So... Thank you. So the third noble truth is cessation. Cessation. Letting go of attachments, letting go of desires, ending craving is the cessation of suffering, is by stopping. Just stop it. I know you guys are kind of getting younger than me by far these days, but anybody remember Bob Newhart? Yeah, really? You're not that young. Well, some of you don't know, but Bob Newhart was this comedian, and he had this one really amazing episode that became quite famous where he's a psychiatrist, I guess, or psychologist, and he's doing this kind of quick therapy thing.

[26:37]

So this woman comes in, and she goes, Oh, my God, I can't believe it. My husband left me. I'm so upset, and she's just kind of hysterical, and he's listening to her for a while, and he says, finally, he just goes, Stop it. Just stop it. So he was right on, you know? Stop it. Let go. She just stares at him. It works, you know? She's kind of like... Okay, it's called an interruption technique. Stop it. Sword, that bloody sword on the altar. Stop it. Okay. So the cessation of suffering... is how, so like I said, these are two sets of cause and effect. This is an effect, an outcome, this is the cause. This is an effect, an outcome, and this is the cause, the path. The cessation of suffering is caused by how you live your life. It's not a one-off.

[27:39]

As nice as that would be. Do you all remember the Yakujo and the Fox story? I mean, I think we fantasized this one-off I don't have to worry about this messy thing anymore. I'm out of there. I'm free. I don't have to deal with cause and effect, causality. So the monk is, the abbot is giving a lecture and there's a fox in the back of the room. And then eventually this fox, or maybe it's a monk, that was a fox, an old man that, actually he's a fox. And the old man comes up to the abbot and said, you know, I used to be the abbot here. a long, long, long time ago, 500 lifetimes as a matter of fact, and a monk asked me, is a person of the way subject to cause and effect? And I said no. And I became a fox for 500 lifetimes. Fox represents karma. Fox drool is karma. So then he says, this old man says to the current abbot, what would you say?

[28:45]

And the current abbot says, I would say a person of the way does not ignore cause and effect, is not ignorant of cause and effect, understands cause and effect, understands the right understanding of the true nature of reality, is the appearance of things based in cause and effect. It's a dream, it's a fantasy, but it's so powerful that we are killing each other because of it, right? So we can't ignore cause and effect and be of any use to anybody, including ourselves. Okay, so enlightenment, also a statement by the Buddha. Enlightenment is the path. The path is enlightenment. How you live your life. Okay. All right, here's the path. Oh, I wanted to mention, I was so grateful to having this book lent to me by Minaj.

[29:46]

And have any of you not read Gilgamesh yet? I was embarrassed. Yeah, I remember. I was embarrassed to have not read this once I read it because it is absolutely beautiful. And talk about grief and longing and bargaining. You know, this is one of the best and most beautiful love stories I've ever read. And I highly recommend it. And maybe Minna will let somebody else borrow it sometime. Where is she? I'm going to... Oh, there you go. That's amazing. Thank you so much. Yeah, beautiful. I'm going to order one. Amazon. Okay, so... The path begins with right view. What is right view? Right understanding of the true nature of reality. Right view. Number two, right intention. So... Also, right view, according to the Buddhist teaching, is the Four Noble Truths.

[30:49]

So it's kind of a loop. Understanding this cause-and-effect relationship and the various elements, and not just understanding it, because as the Buddha says in his first sermon, the first step is to consider, well, maybe this is good. All right, I'll buy it. This is interesting. The second step is to really focus on it. So you hear something, you think, well, that sounds true. That's the first learning. Shrutamaya prajna is the hearing of the wisdom. The second learning is jintamaya prajna, meaning the studying of it. So then you penetrate, you study it. You're like, I've been practicing with this one. I thought, I haven't really done that. Just notice suffering. Boy, it's all the time. Like, you know, it's kind of like an on-off switch. I'm happy, I'm not happy. I'm happy, I'm not happy. It's just amazing how much suffering I have. I'm amazed I'm happy at all. But it's quite powerful to start to consider the truth of suffering. And it comes in these forms.

[31:51]

I don't like that. I don't want that. I want more of that. Why did they do that? Or that's too much of that. And he said blah, blah, blah all the time. So focus on suffering and also the causes of it. See how your mind is creating that and so on. So right view is to study the Four Noble Truths and to penetrate and see them and realize them. The Buddha realized them. It was three steps. He says in his realization that led to... I should read this. This is really good. The last part of the first sermon... As long as my correct knowledge and vision in these 12 aspects, so recognizing that it's a good thing to learn, learning it, and then really knowing it. So those are the three aspects times four truths makes 12. As long as my correct knowledge and vision in these 12 aspects, in these three phases of penetration to each of the four truths,

[32:53]

was not quite purified, I did not claim to have discovered the full enlightenment that is supreme in the world with its deities, its maras, its divinities, and this generation with its monks and brahmans, with its princes and its men. But as soon as my correct knowledge and vision and these twelve aspects in the three phases of each of the four noble truths was quite purified, then I claimed to have discovered the full enlightenment that is supreme in the world with its deities, maras, and divinities. It's monks and Brahmins and so on. The knowledge and vision was in me. My heart's deliverance is unassailable. This is the last birth. There is no more renewal of being. So that's his final declaration of his enlightenment was his realization of this truth of the Four Noble Truths about reality. So right view, that's that. Right intention. Right intention is called samyak samkalpa.

[33:57]

Right view is samyak samdristi. Dristi is view. Samyak means right. Right intention is samyak samkalpa. Right intention is to be desireless, friendly, and compassionate. Seems pretty possible. Right speech. So these two are prajna. So I think you may know the three... the three aspects of the Buddhist teaching which are repeated, like if you do look at the Vasudhi manga, it's divided into these three categories. There's wisdom, prajna, ethics, shila, and samadhi, concentration. So ethics, concentration, and wisdom are repeated again and again and again. So right intention and right view are prajna, wisdom, Ethics are speech, conduct, and livelihood. The importance here of these are behaviors.

[35:02]

These are how you behave. In some ways, it doesn't really matter what you think, but how you behave. I don't know what you're thinking, but how you behave makes an impact on me, and my behavior makes an impact on you. Action and behavior is what makes our karma. Karma means action. Fox drool. So negative actions, negative outcome. Positive action, positive outcome. That's the law, karma law. So speech, refraining from false speech, from lying, from divisive speech, speech that divides the sangha in particular, from hurtful speech, or from idle chatter. That one's hard. I'm not sure I'm ready for that one. Number four, conduct, actions, refraining from, harming living beings, taking what's not given. You'll hear the bodhisattva vows in there.

[36:03]

And sexual misconduct. Holy moly. I can't even believe it, what's happening out there. Shambhala, you all know? I mean, everybody, who's not? I mean, there needs to be some kind of like, what are we going to do, folks? How are we going to get this right? It's so painful. So I think there's a lot of talking going on and we're doing a lot of talking at Zen Center about sexual misconduct and about our attitude around sexuality and each other and how do we love each other in a way that doesn't create harm or isn't welcomed and so on. So we have to talk about that a lot. So not abusing sexuality. Okay, livelihood is not based, any livelihood which is not based on wrong speech, or action is right livelihood. Okay? So these are the ethics. This is the category of ethics, morality. And if your ethics are not well in hand, it's really hard to meditate.

[37:06]

Because all of that karma, which is mind, is running through your mind as like guilty feelings and, you know, anger and all kinds of resentment and so on and so on. So it's really important to get start with conduct etiquette. The Buddha taught etiquette. I was reading the VINIA rules for the monks and nuns, which are quite long. There's like 200-some-odd regulations, and some of them seem like really, like, why? I mean, how come no hopping in a donor's house? I said, gee, I've never done that. Would I do that? Not grabbing food out of your neighbor's bowl. I mean, wouldn't that be weird? I started taking Jeff's. food out of his bowl. So these are rules, you know. And then I thought, I think he had a lot of children. There were a lot of young'uns that came out of the woods who joined the monasteries. And people didn't live that long anyway.

[38:07]

So probably most of them were under 30. So this etiquette that he learned as a prince, as a young prince raised in the royal family, he was teaching to his young men mostly young women, but less so, young men, so that when they went into town, they were welcome. They got fed. If you hop into the donor's house, he might not want to feed you. So they really learned deportment. They learned how to behave, and they still do. I mean, the monks are still noted for their deportment. We don't know what they're thinking, but we know how they behave, most important. Action. Right effort. This is an interesting one because it applies to all of them. Right effort sort of covers the range, but it's particularly attached to samadhi, making the right effort around samadhi.

[39:08]

And right effort is defined as preventing unwholesome states that arise, like just don't entertain those thoughts. You see them coming, it's like, nope. I'm not going there. I'm not going there. There's a prohibition in Lavinia against peep shows, which I thought was kind of funny. Peep shows where there were these fences where you could, for a quarter or a rupee, they'd open the hole in the fence and you could look through and there'd be some scantily dressed person in there. And then time's up and they'd close the hole again. So monks weren't supposed to go to peep shows. So I thought, well, that's cute. Isn't that funny? And then I was sitting in my kitchen drinking coffee one morning and I was thinking about something in a really negative way. And I thought, oh, that's a peep show. I'm allowing myself to look at something with this really negative attitude. And I just said, no, no, stop it. You know, stop it. So prevent unwholesome states, abandon ones that have arisen, arouse wholesome states, and cultivate...

[40:17]

wholesome states that have arisen. So this is a combination of letting go of things which are unwholesome and of cultivating things which are wholesome, such as right mindfulness and right meditation. So this is where effort is a support for our practice. Okay, here's the big ones. Mindfulness. Mindfulness in the early teachings, first turning, really is mindfulness of the four foundations of mindfulness. So the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, have all of you read the Mahasatipatthana Sutta? Some of you. Please think about it. Just think about it. They're short, and I think you would get so much benefit if a few of these, and I'm going to write down just a few suggestions for you. Mahasatipatthana Sutra is one of them. The first turning, now you've heard, so you've read that. And there are a few other things that I think would just really inform your practice in a way that I'm sure you would appreciate because it certainly is – I appreciate it for me.

[41:18]

And so the four foundations of mindfulness are mindfulness and they're kind of in order of – Not intensity, but more like grossness. So mindfulness of the body, gross in the sense that you can actually find your body. You know, it's pretty easy to feel sensations through your body. So that's the first level of mindfulness. The second one is feelings. And you don't have to get into emotions and why or reasoning. It's just like, is it positive, is it negative, or is it neutral? Just those three things. Mindfulness of your state of mind. You're in a good mood, you're in a bad mood, or you're not sure. The third one is mindfulness of your thoughts. What are you thinking? And the fourth is mindfulness of the components of your thinking, what are called dharmas, and I'm going to talk about those in the third class, the Abhidharma, study of these little constituents of thought, which are considered to be when you get all the wholesome ones lined up, that's the path to liberation.

[42:25]

And what was really interesting to me in reading some Chinese Zen teachers' recommendations around mindfulness practice is their recommendation was don't try to do all of these. Pick one or two that you focus on. And the most common practice for mindfulness of the body is which one do you think? What's the most common? Breath, right? That's the one we do here, right? I mean, I think you do. Mindfulness of your breathing. When I teach meditation, I suggest breath counting as a way to calm down, as shamatha, entering into calm abiding through breath counting. One, two, and so on. So that's a common practice. What do you think the other one is that's most recommended? And I love this because we do it here. Nope. Well, no. Not posture. Part of the body.

[43:29]

Part of the body. Nope. Close. Nope. Okay. I'm standing on him. Feet. Kinyin. Isn't that fun? We do breathing. We teach breathing and we teach kinyin. And those are the two that the Chinese teacher recommends. You practice thoroughly with your feet. You practice thoroughly with your breath. I thought that was great. Zen is great. Everybody's got everything. And then the last one is right meditation. And again, I'm going to talk about that almost entirely the next class. I'll talk about these jhanas and samadhi and so on and so forth because I think it's a good part of our inheritance. And you may be dropping into them and not recognizing them. And it's kind of nice to know what that was you just came out of. So right meditation. And this... is the path to nirvana. Blown out.

[44:33]

So as you well may... Oh, by the way, right meditation in the early first turning teachings is the practice of the four jhanas. That's what it is. So that's why I'm going to talk about that next time. And one thing to say about nirvana... What time do we end? Pretty soon, I bet, because people are moving on. Up to you. Up to me? Whoa. Okay. I'll slow down a little bit. I'm almost done. Nirvana, in some schools, they say it's a place or it's a state of mind. You can go to nirvana. You can live there, like a magic castle or something. You can live in nirvana. It's actually a location. Others say that it neither exists nor doesn't exist. That's kind of the middle way. There is, there isn't nirvana. And still others say it is simply the absence of defilements of greed, hate, and delusion.

[45:34]

When you no longer have greed, hate, and delusion, that's nirvana. I kind of like that one. Seems, you know, almost like, almost, you could almost imagine that. And Mahayana, so this is, again, the first turning. When we get into the Mahayana, we're now shifting toward non-dual, and emptiness teachings. So nirvana becomes much more... You're not quite sure what we're talking about. But anyway, we'll get there. Or we are there. In the Mahayana, we're already there. So there's really nowhere to go. That's why we like it so much. So... Okay, so one of the things, just to conclude, I wanted to say is that one of the ways, one of the results of studying the path... is that one comes to understand the relationship between one's underlying emotional state. What are you thinking?

[46:35]

Where is your mind? What state of mind are you in? One's underlying emotional state, that's six, seven, and eight. One's actions in the world, how your emotional state affects how you behave in the world. and how one understands reality. We have no choice about this. How we're feeling and how we behave and how we understand reality is happening anyway. This is a way of us engaging deeply with our very own lives. and how we might recondition ourselves around all kinds of things like racism and sexism and you name it. There's all kinds of isms that we need to recondition ourselves away from believing our true into actually freeing ourselves and everyone else around us from those beliefs. Okay, any questions before we go back to the Zen Mill? Did I drift off or did you not say much about intention? Uh...

[47:36]

It could be both of those. How can I know? Let's see. What did I say? I did. I said it was desireless, friendly, and compassionate. It's samyak samkapa. Anyone else? Jenny. speech, conduct, and mind. What about brain effort, mindfulness, and meditation? Concentration. Samadhi. Yeah. Concentration. So it's wisdom, ethics, concentration, and wisdom. That's the order of the old first teaching. In Zen, we switch it around. Start with wisdom. Prajnaparamita. So they're just different ways of teaching.

[48:40]

But this old Old style was first you clean up your act through ethics, through deportment, so that you're not plagued by bad thinking from the past. You can actually calm down and concentrate. Then you develop your concentration and out of your concentration comes an understanding about the nature of reality. So ethics, concentration, wisdom. You did? It's very heady. Yeah, well, if you can hold it, that'd be amazing. Most headiness just kind of slips right away, right? I mean, you try to focus on something. That's part of what concentration is interesting. It's like, do I focus? Am I able to hold? You know, I kind of move on pretty fast. So I'm really appreciating. I wish I had a little more headiness sometimes so that I could learn things in a way that I could then know them.

[49:43]

You know, so I think heady is okay. I don't want to vote against it. That's part of learning. That's the second kind of wisdom. Chintamaya Prashna is study, study, repeat, repeat until you know it. And then it just comes out of you. You know, you don't even know how you know it. Like those songs you learn on the radio. You just, you learn them. Or the Dahi Shandarani. I don't know how I learned the Dahi Shandarani. It's bizarre that I can chant that. But, so I don't know if that's heady, but that's using your faculty of knowing and learning to bring in things that might serve you well. The danger is if you don't notice your judgments and you just do them.

[50:47]

The wisdom is coming from paying attention to what's going on. It's not your mind anyway. It's the mind. Judgment is arising in the mind. If you say in my mind and I can't stop me thinking, it's like there's that agent of control. Well, there isn't one. So those thoughts arise in the mind. My judgments arise in the mind. I see that. Do I believe it? Is there belief? Belief is the linchpin to freedom. I'm not buying it. I just don't buy it. And that's the greatest hope for us is just not to buy what we're thinking. Don't believe it. I've said to you guys before, it's these emotionalized conceptualizations that are the grist inside of our judgmental, gnarly self-making. I feel it and I think it and therefore it's true. Well, no. You're just feeling it and thinking it.

[51:51]

That's all. No more than that. If you don't act on it, you'll begin to see that too. It begins to dissolve. Through your own practice of being a Zen student and teacher, how did you work through the Eightfold Path? did you with that? Did it come to you or did you say, okay, I'm going to work on the right view and then I'm going to work on the right intention? Well, they're not in order. This is, like I said, it's a way of life. So, yeah, you go to work, right? How do you behave when you're at work? How do you talk to people? These are all mixing together. But if we have an intention to be kind and friendly and desireless, I need you to make me happy. That's my intention. Well, this will affect how I behave at work and how I talk to people.

[52:55]

So this is kind of a corrective, a formula for correcting how you live your life. And I would say that's what we're all doing all the time in engaging in communal living. Like, how do we, oh gosh, I really hurt her feelings or I really made him mad. Or it's like, I want to go back to that person. as soon as I can. Can we sit down and have a conversation? That wasn't my intention. I know it was my impact. I get that. I've learned that distinction. Even though I didn't mean to do it, I hurt your feelings, and I really want you to know I'm so sorry. So, you know, we're learning. It's a learning thing. It takes a really long time. But I must say, as I said to you all in the first talk, after being around Zen Center for a year or so, I was so confused, even though I liked Zazen. That's why I kept coming. I was like, what are they talking about? I couldn't find any—there's no systematic explanation of anything. So I went to the library and looked at the first sermon, and it blew my mind.

[53:56]

I'm like, oh, my God, somebody was just talking about the Four Noble Truths. There they are. They're talking about the Middle Way. There it is. There it is. Where is it? Anyway, Seymour. So— That was a really amazing revelation to me, that these are the teachings that the teachers are teaching, but they're not doing it in order. And that's okay, but it's up to us. If you need some order, you can make it for yourself. I needed a timeline. What happened in China? What happened in India? Was it really a bodhidharma? Well, not really. But anyway, so you start to learn by reading what is apocryphal, what is actually likely... I do think Suzuki Roshi lived because I've heard people say they saw him. So I'm willing to buy that one. But too much further back? I don't know. But they're good stories. So we like these stories. Zen is about stories. And they're wonderful. So I'm still here because I think it's a nice way to be, a nice way to be with other people.

[55:02]

Kind of like that, if that answers your question. So, the enlightened one, I'm guessing, was completely unfinished? After his enlightenment? Yes. Well, I guess. I think they say that, yeah. So, when he... Uh-oh, you're setting a trap for me. I know you always do. But go ahead. I'll step in just for you. When he hesitated about... Yeah. Well, I think that was conditioning of his culture. I'm not sure he had... Well, first of all, this is 500 years later. Second of all, that they wrote anything down about this guy, so I don't even know if there was a guy like that. I mean... You know, the further away in history we get from these characters, the bigger and more glowy they become.

[56:08]

So they're now six feet five instead of four feet, you know. So I don't know about the Buddha's actual person. I don't know if what his statements to his monks is what they said he said or whatever. But he did a very radical thing in allowing women to come into the Sangha because his first reaction was, this is going to wreck everything for us. Because now we're going to have to deal with all that stuff that goes on when men and women get together, like the Catholics are dealing with right now. It's pretty awful. So what are we going to do? Maybe he had an intuition that it's going to be hard for the monks to be settled if there are women nearby. I don't know. I don't know. Given the fact that we are such mortal and weak beings, don't you think he might have been right? Yeah, probably. Probably. For the sake of everybody, it might have been better if we all stayed separate from each other. There wouldn't be any more humans. Because babies come from, apparently, from, so I hear.

[57:09]

So, you know, sure, ending the species wouldn't be a bad idea. You weren't going to go that far. Well, we wouldn't be having this conversation if you had. But as we've seen from what's happened with the male monastics, it doesn't end sexuality because there aren't any women around. Women are just about the baby part. In fact, one of the reasons that, and if you read the regulations, there's a really good book by, what's his name? Bernard Four on, what's it called? The Red Thread. Thank you. And it's about all the sexual activity going on in the Buddhist monasteries. They were sort of like they had young novicius, just like the Catholic priests did, who were they dressed up very nicely. They put red piping on their robes. So, yeah, that was happening.

[58:09]

That's the truth. And the truth is how set us free. So we need to know the truth about our behavior as human beings. including at the time of the Buddha and what happened, even though there were regulations against all of it. The grounds for expulsion was having sex with women. Why? Babies. If you have a baby, you are more likely to want to maintain your lineage in your family life and care for your offspring, your heir, and so on and so forth. If you don't have children, maybe you'll just stay in the monastery. So you were not expelled for having sex with other men. Nor were the women. So yeah, maybe it was a better idea. But if you look at the reasoning behind any of this stuff, there's a lot of practical stuff going on in base camp. So we keep learning about that. Does that help? Welcome. Maybe we should end.

[59:10]

Kitchen has to go. Okay. Well, thank you all. Yeah. Much to talk about. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[59:42]

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