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 I'm happy to be here, happy to be back at Tassajara. And I was asked to do this class and I would share with you something I've been researching the last few years, having to do with the Four Noble Truths. And a little bit of my history of studying more scholarly studies of Buddhism was, I just keep going back in time, introduced to Buddhism to Zen practice through Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, and that eventually got me to read Dogen, and that got me to read the early Perfection of Wisdom literature, And then that got me to read the early Pali literature of suttos. And I was hoping it would stop there.

[01:00]

But unfortunately, it keeps going back because in order to understand that, I felt I had to go and read the earlier Upanishadic literature. And I'm hoping one day to go back up again through time and get back to the present. So... So at the heart of my practice of Buddhism, I would say, is the Four Noble Truths. I find it very meaningful and very liberating teaching and very applicable teaching in all areas of life. I see that the Four Noble Truths are the great protectors that protect my Buddhism, they protect my practice, protect my life. And one of the things that protects me from is Buddhism itself, which is very nice. The... So a few years ago, I was poking around in the early Pali suttas, the sutras that are preserved in the Pali language, that are part of the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. They're considered to be some of the earliest literature that survives in Buddhism.

[02:03]

So if you want to go back and find out what the Buddha might have taught, people tend to go back to this body of literature. And so I was poking around, looking to see what these texts say about the Four Noble Truths. And that seems like it's a pretty central teaching. Probably most of you have heard that the Four Noble Truths are the core message of the Buddha, central message of Buddhism. And not a few people, if you're going to have just like one or two minutes to tell people what's the essence of Buddhism, probably would select the Four Noble Truths to say this is what Buddhism is really at the heart of it, what's most important. And I haven't read Dogen now for a good number of years, but does Dogen talk about the Four Noble Truths? Anybody know? Yes? You asked me this last year, and I said yes, and I couldn't say where. And you'll go look? I went home and I checked it out. I don't remember, but I remember finding out that he did. Well, please tell me. I wish I could now.

[03:07]

Home and check. I will. Yeah. So some of what I say today will be a repeat from last year, but I'm planning to say something different. You're sitting in the front row, so I guess that's helpful. So you need to come in closer, those of you. There are some chairs here if you want to be closer. Thank you. I'm having trouble hearing you in the back. If you guys out in the outer hall want to come, there's four chairs, five chairs in the back here. Maybe you have a better chance hearing me. Yeah, if you kind of slide, everyone slide this way, parting of the waters for me, then some people can get into the... There's a chair there that someone can move over to... So a couple of years ago, I started poking around to see what the Buddha had to say about the Four Noble Truths in these ancient discourses.

[04:28]

And the more I looked into it more carefully, the more surprised I was. And the surprise was that it doesn't say what it's supposed to say. That the received wisdom, the teachings that I've received down through the decades about what the Four Noble Truths are, what the teachings of the Buddha are, just couldn't be substantiated when you look carefully at what actually goes on in the text. And it seems like there's been a huge misunderstanding when people read this. Now, it's pretty presumptuous for someone like me to come along and just read these texts and say, well, there's a big misunderstanding. Thousands of people have been scholars and everything, right? So I thought I'd be the laughingstock of the Buddhist world if I said anything but what I was finding. So I've done a fair amount of careful... scholarly work in order to really kind of, sees it really in there, what I'm finding. So I'm preparing this 40-page scholarly paper with lots of quotes and analysis that explains this. So what I'm going to say today is backed up by a lot.

[05:31]

Someday you can look at this paper. So one place to begin is that the Four Noble Truths do appear in the ancient literature, and the Buddha does explain them, does teach what they are. But he does it so seldom that we have to ask ourselves, could this really be the central teachings, if he hardly mentions them at all? There's only five places in this ancient literature where the Buddha actually explains what the Four Noble Truths are. They say there are 18,000 sutras in this early literature. And in five of those sutras, he explains the Four Noble Truths. If you take those five passages, and which scholars have done, and at least three of them, there's a very good argument to be made that there are later interpolations. Meaning that after the Buddha died, if he is responsible for them at all, later generations added the discussion about the Four Noble Truths into them.

[06:37]

And one of the places that some of you might have seen this is there's a text called The Larger Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, the Mahasati Ptanasutta, and it has a long explanation of the Four Noble Truths at the end. But that whole discussion of the Four Noble Truths there, by vocabulary, style of writing, analysis, comes verbatim from later literature, from the Abhidhamma literature. which clearly was produced later, and it was taken out and plugged back in, and it just doesn't fit in there, just out of context almost. And then there are other places where the discussion of Four Noble Truths just doesn't make sense, and people say that it's an interpolation there. So of these five times where the Buddha explains it, at least three of them, they are, you know, you can't reliably attribute it to the Buddha.

[07:40]

And then, if you look at what he actually says about the Four Noble Truths in those five explanations, each time it's different. So, what is the real teachings of the Four Noble Truths? What is it? Now, I think most of you, if you're familiar with the Four Noble Truths, will see that the Second Noble Truth is the truth of the cause of suffering. Is that what some of you thought, unless you were here last year? So, you know... And so they'll say that there's suffering, there's a cause of suffering, there's a cessation of suffering, and then there's a path to leading to the cessation of suffering. And so this idea that there's a cause is the common modern interpretation. I think it's a great interpretation, actually. But you don't find it in the early suttas. And in fact... It's the least likely interpretation of the Four Noble Truths based on what you find in the suttas, that the second one is causation.

[08:44]

So what is it if it's not causation? The other thing is that the way that the modern world... I would like to read you a few modern Buddhist writers of some renown in their description of the Second Noble Truth. The cause of suffering is the mind's struggle in response to challenge. That's nice. Life is difficult because of attachment, because we crave satisfaction in ways that are inherently dissatisfying. The cause of suffering is clinging to desired objects and states of being. The second truth speaks of the primal thirst that makes humiliation inevitable. The cause of suffering are the kilesas, afflictive emotions that torment the mind, such as greed, envy, hatred, anger, and fear. These are modern Western people writing about it.

[09:49]

So maybe you've read something. You might have read these people's books and don't remember that you've actually read this. But these are common, what appears in modern literature. This is what it actually says in one of the explanations the Buddha gave for the Four Noble Truths. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the arising of suffering. It is that craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming. So here, it refers to a particular kind of craving, and the word is tanna in the ancient language, which means thirst, a particular kind of craving that leads to renewed becoming, renewed existence, rebirth. And if you go look at some of the dictionaries, the Pali dictionaries, for the definition of this word craving, this tanna, they refer to it as the kind of the original craving that got you born in the first place.

[11:03]

And that's the beginning. All your suffering is here because you got born. And because you're responsible for your birth, because you craved further life in this rebirth theory, it's that craving which is the arising of suffering. And so then the idea would be that if you can cease and bring an end to that particular kind of craving, then you won't get reborn. And then you're free of further birth and further suffering. That's a very different explanation and concern than how most Western Dharma teachers address the Four Noble Truths. Mostly we're concerned about how this is practical in our lives today. And so we often say that we look at craving or attachment or clinging as a source of our suffering. And if I want, you know, ice cream, and I really suffer because I'm not getting ice cream, then I can look at my craving for it and let go of it, and then that suffering for ice cream goes away.

[12:08]

It's much more practical as opposed to something which is more, I don't know, it's certainly practical if you believe the logic, the beliefs of rebirth. But if your central religious trust is to be free of rebirth, then you want to get to the core kind of craving that keeps you getting reborn. But if you're not oriented to freedom from rebirth as what your religious life is about, then some people then are more interested in something more pragmatic in this lifetime here. And I think most Western Buddhist teachers have had this more pragmatic approach. And so they often talk about it in terms of everyday life and what's going on here and looking kind of cause and effect here in this lifetime. Is that accurate enough for those of you who heard teachings and read about them? So how do we get from the Buddhist explanation of the Second Noble Truth to the modern ones? That's kind of an open question. So I started looking at this and seeing that a lot of things weren't kind of what I expected them to be.

[13:15]

And then I started looking at the Pali, the actual language itself, not the English translations. And it turns out that a lot of the English translations that we relied on are not very accurate translations to begin with. One of the most interesting things that a very preeminent Pali scholar by the name of K.R. Norman has shown is that even the title, The Four Noble Truths, is an accurate translation, but it's only one of three or four accurate possible translations, and it's the least likely of the ones. So it's okay to translate that way, but it's least likely. In fact, one of the most famous scholars or commentators on the Pali tradition, a man named Buddha Gosha, who lived in the 5th century, wrote a big volume called Many, Many, Many Things. And he also says it's at least likely.

[14:15]

And this K.R. Norman says the most likely is that the word, the expression that we translate as Four Noble Truths, should be translated as the truths of the noble ones. The truths of the noble ones. And the Eightfold Path should be called not the noble Eightfold Path, but the Eightfold Path of the Noble Ones. And so it's not the nobility of some abstract thing, like a path or a teaching or a doctrine, but the early tradition is very much focused on individuals, individual realization, individual spiritual maturation. And not so much interest in something so abstract that they would call the truths the noble truths. It's more likely they're talking about individuals who are noble. And what it means to be noble in this early tradition is Arya, is to have some degree of enlightenment. And these are the people who were esteemed in this early tradition. The goal of practice was, in a sense, to become an Arya, a noble one. And so the truths of the noble ones...

[15:21]

What this implies is that the Four Noble Truths are not prescriptive practices to take on in order to get enlightened, but they are descriptive of how an enlightened person sees the world. And the Eightfold Path is not a prescription for the kind of practice you're supposed to do in order to get enlightened. It's descriptive of how someone lives when they are enlightened. And this seems to be the main emphasis in this early text about these Four Noble Truths about the Eightfold Path. They're more descriptive than they are prescriptive. Make some sense? And then if you look also at some of the most popular English translations of the Four Noble Truths.

[16:23]

There's a famous scholar named Bhikkhu Bodhi, who's probably one of the most well-known scholars of his early texts. He translates the Second Noble Truth as the truth of the origin of suffering. Tanisura Bhikkhu, another translator, translates as the truth of the origination of suffering. And it was not quite clear what origin means. But the word that you're translating as origin does not mean origin. It literally is a very common word that means arising. The truth of the arising of suffering. And it's a very different connotation if you're looking for the origin of something, the beginning of something, or if you're looking to actually see how something comes into being, how it arises. It wasn't there and then it arises and you watch it arise. And this, being able to see, be so much and so well in the present moment, you see the birth, the arising of thought, arising of feelings, arising of perceptions, is one of the central insights of this early tradition.

[17:31]

One of the kind of fun places where this is seen, in the middle-length discourses, there's a text numbered 123, that is phantasmagoric. It's like kind of far out mythology. My idea, my image of how this text was composed was there were a bunch of monastics sitting around the campfire and trying to outdo each other with coming up with some miracle tale. They'd come up with a great miracle tale and then they would laugh and someone else would come up with another one and they'd laugh. But anyway, whether that's true or not, it was composed in such a way that all these wonderful miracles are described, and then the real miracle is described at the end. So some of you know that there's some Zen teaching, right, that says that the true miracle is chopping wood and carrying water, and that's something like that. And so the idea is just ordinary life.

[18:35]

That's the real miracle. So this text goes... It talks about how the Buddha was born. And it starts off to say, the Buddha was started off in Tosita heaven, his last lifetime before, and then he descended into his mother's womb. This is a wonderful miracle. And then the whole cosmos, the universe, was filled with light. And all these beings who lived in the dark suddenly could see themselves out in the corners of the galaxies. And this was a great miracle. And then there was a great earthquake. not only for this world, but all the galaxies, all the universe quaked and shook when the Buddha came in, descended into his mother's womb. And this is a great miracle. And it goes on and on, lists all these things. And then when he was born, he was received by God, so he wouldn't have to touch the ground. This is a great miracle. And then two streams of water came out of the sky and washed the baby Buddha, even though he didn't need to be cleaned because he was a Buddha.

[19:37]

He, you know, They kind of cleaned him and his mother. And then he took seven steps. So that's pretty good for a newborn, right? And you know, there's probably some story of pointing to the sky and pointing below. And he says, I'm the best around. I'm the greatest. And so much conceit in this thing that this guy really needed to become a Buddha. No wonder he had to practice so hard. So this too is a miracle. that he's so precocious that he can walk and talk and proclaim his greatness. And so it goes on, and everyone's laughing around the campfire, is my image of it. And then the Buddha hears all this, and the Buddha says, yes. Yes, he says. And then he says, basically he says, well now I'll tell you the real miracle. And he says, to see... the arising of a thought, the persistence of a thought, and the ending of a thought.

[20:42]

To see the arising of a feeling, the persistence of a feeling, and the seizing of a feeling. To see the arising of a perception, the persistence of a perception, and the ending of a perception. That is the miracle. So all these earlier kind of great miracles, cosmic miracles, are kind of like a rhetorical setup to highlight what the real miracle is at the end. It's kind of like that's the climax. And now we're back to something that's almost like, you know, chopping wood, carrying water, just something so ordinary as having a thought, having a feeling, having a perception. And so this is kind of one of the central insights of this early tradition, is the ability to have the kind of mindfulness and concentration that allows you to see something arise and cease. Because if you see it arise and seize, then in kind of Mahayana language, then you see the emptiness of it. You see that it has no inherent existence by itself.

[21:43]

It's there in a kind of ephemeral way. You can't say that it's absolutely there, and you can't say that it's not there, because it's there briefly, but it's not there or not there in some absolute sense. For the earlier tradition, the idea is that if you can see something in its arising, in its seizing, then you're not so likely to latch on to it, to cling to it, because it doesn't make sense to cling to something which vanishes before you can actually reach out and hold on to it. And also, unlikely, and this is very important for early tradition, is that you don't take yourself, you don't find yourself in those things. If something is arising and passing, it doesn't qualify as some inherent self. as some soul or some kind of, you know, this is who I absolutely am. And so this very strong human inclination to take something as me, myself and mine, is much more difficult to do when things are arising and passing.

[22:47]

Things are only there in a fleeting way. How can something which is about to go away, a thought which comes from moment and goes, how could it, you know, how could I hold on to it as being me? And probably if you look carefully at your minds, you would see that any time that you assume or say that this is myself or have a feeling, this is who I am, you're probably doing that through the help one way or the other of thoughts, feelings, or perceptions. And if those thoughts, feelings, perceptions are arising and passing or impermanent, then it's very hard to kind of take something as this is myself. And this is one of the things this early tradition was emphasizing, is this giving up, letting go, relaxing any and all tendencies to latch onto something as a self, or any tendency to even define yourself in any way. The idea of not being defined by anything whatsoever is part of this freedom that the early tradition points to.

[23:52]

So something about seeing things arise and pass, which is central. And so in some of the descriptions of the Buddha's enlightenment, or self-descriptions according to the texts, how he describes his awakening, he says that he knew directly that this, the word this is important because it's a pronoun pointing to something immediately right here. I saw, he said something like, I saw with my with direct awareness, direct knowledge, suffering. This is suffering. I saw this is the arising of suffering. This is the seizing of suffering. And here we're seeing this thing about seeing the arising and seizing, right? And then he said, and then I saw that this is the practice that is conducive to the cessation of suffering.

[24:55]

So suffering, its arising, its ceasing, and the practice that is conducive to its cessation of suffering. This looks very much like what is called the Four Noble Truths. And so now the statement, suffering, the arising suffering, the ceasing of it, and the way conducive to the cessation of suffering, this appears some like hundreds of times in the suttas. This is a really important insight. the discussion of the five noble truths happens five times. You know, if you put this on scales, you know, one would be, you know, way outweigh the other in terms of importance. And what people have done, this is kind of the heart of my research, is that people have confused these two. And people have thought the four noble truths are really important, are the central message of the Buddha, And they go to these very few places where it's discussed and say, here it is.

[26:00]

And then they explain it and build whole books around it. And then they'll say, this is what the Buddha discovered on the night of his awakening. And the reason why they... On the night of his awakening, he did not discover the Four Noble Truths. He discovered the tremendous power of the insight into seeing things arise and pass. But the wording of these two, the Four Noble Truths and the Four Liberating Insights, are very similar. And they use some of the same words, and they use the same pattern. The pattern of seeing something, seeing suffering, seeing the arising of it, seeing the seizing of it, and seeing this way, this practice to the seizing of it. They're very similar, how they're worded. And so the assumption is that the Buddha's liberating insight is the same as the Four Noble Truths. But actually, they're two separate things. And because once you assume that the Buddha realized the Four Noble Truths in the Night of Awakening, for the modern readers, then we start assuming that he understood causality, the cause of suffering.

[27:15]

And the cause of suffering is a more complicated realization that has to do with time and what happened in the past. then this very direct and powerful thing of seeing in the present moment something arise and pass. And it's even more complicated to see that original craving, the origin of craving, back in time that got you born here to begin with in the first place. These are much more complicated analysis. And in fact, some of the explanations of the Four Noble Truths and Suttas are quite complex. And you kind of scratch your head if you look at them sometimes. You know, these five. You know, I still can't quite understand what to even say, some of them. I've been scratching my head for a long time. And some of them are never quoted, never discussed, some of them, because no one knows what to do with them. So we ignore some of the five and we hang on to just a couple of them as being the thing. So I think what happened was that in the ancient world is that the four were liberating insights.

[28:21]

the insight into suffering, its arising, and seizing, that was a key insight. And it was so important, these four, this pattern of seeing suffering, arising, seizing, and the path, the way, that at some point someone came along and said, as they did in the ancient world, we have to define the words. And all these, like Abhidhamma and later texts, have a lot to do with defining a lot of the words that exist in the early texts. So people started defining them. But the people who defined them did a poor job. And it's kind of complicated. It doesn't quite make sense, what they're saying. And then we try to make our best guess to try to interpret it for ourselves. And we interpret it kind of like really... I mean, if you look at how Westerners or people in the modern world interpret the Four Noble Truths, It's all over the map. There's a lot of different ways. And that's part of the brilliance.

[29:23]

The unintended brilliance of the Four Noble Truths. I think they're a great skillful means. And we should use them. And it's okay that it doesn't match up with what the liberating insight is of the Buddha. It doesn't matter that much that the Buddha might not have taught the Four Noble Truths. It's just great that they came down to us in the way they have. And the idea that maybe they talk about... focus on the cause of suffering, I think that's a brilliant thing to look at. I find it useful in my own life to kind of look at the cause of my suffering and something. But we cannot say that this is what the Buddha taught. But that's okay. He doesn't have to have a monopoly on truth. And so I see it as a skillful means of the tradition. But the reference point for the skillful means is something which is fundamental, is something which is kind of inherent or essential to at least the early tradition.

[30:26]

And that is a very important insight into emptiness or insight into impermanence or the arising and passing of phenomena. And so that is what is liberating. And so if the four double truths are being used in a Buddhist sense as skillful means, there's many ways of interpreting them. But ultimately, it's in the service of helping people to have this experience, this insight of the radical impermanence of our experience in our life. Does that make sense? Enough? I realize it's kind of complicated, all these things. I apologize to those of you who lost me. Lost the argument. But do you want to ask any questions about this? Comments? Yes? A little bit louder for my ears. Sure. He says that the four liberating truths are what is usually assigned to him in the Enlightenment, right? It's commonly assigned to him. It's a text habit in his first person.

[31:27]

He's referring to himself as having these experiences. Is there anything in the text that indicates he had some other experience? More to it than just those four liberating truths? He... There are some places where he doesn't describe the experience in the same way, but he categorizes the experience. And one of the ways it categorizes is seeing dependent origination. So that's a little different. And in some of the later texts, if you look through the history of the earlier texts after the Buddha, some of them do say that he realized the 12-fold dependent origination. around the time of his awakening. Some texts say he experienced it before his awakening. There was a precursor to it. Some people say he experienced it or realized it after his awakening as a result of his awakening. And some say it was part of his awakening. But that's the main ones.

[32:28]

One place he says that he pulled out the arrow in his heart that was causing his suffering. What does it mean to categorize his experience? Well, it's more of a secondary, not a description exactly, but a title for it. I don't know how to say it exactly. If you see that cause and effect or conditionality, you actually see it in front of you, then you can see it in many different ways. And you can say that I saw dependent origination. You know, there was a cloud, and in the cloud there was rain, and I saw a dependent origination. So that's a kind of category or a characterization of it, as opposed to describing what he actually experienced. Does that make sense? Yes? What was the Pani word again? For which? Thus? Oh, thirst.

[33:29]

Thirst. Tanna. Tanna. T-A-N-H-A. Can you say a bit more about the idea of wanting to be born, the concept behind this, or are there some more parts of the Tani Kana where this is mentioned to explain? Yeah, I mean, the idea of Tanna is scattered throughout this text. It's a very important word, the craving. And in this kind of explanation, the Four Noble Truths, it connects it to the thirst for... rebirth for continued existence. And there's a strong current in this early literature that part of the goal of practice was no longer get reborn in this endless cycles of rebirth, born and all that. And I think back then, I think those people who had that kind of teaching took it literally. And so when you die, there has to be some momentum and some cause or condition

[34:34]

that perpetuates the life, or whatever it goes on, perpetuates into the next life. And the image idea is that there's a kind of a craving, a wanting. And so when you die, that momentum of wanting has to be there to latch on to the next life after you've died. If that wanting is not there, then it just goes out. Does that answer your question well enough? And just to clarify on that, that's what the Four Noble Truths is saying, right? Well, it seems to be that's what... Or is that what the Liberating Insights is? One of the Buddha's explanations of the Four Noble Truths, or actually a few of them, defined the Second Noble Truth as this, saying, it is that craving which leads to renewed existence. Okay, and so what you're suggesting is that rather what he actually experienced was the Four Liberating Insights, where... what we would typically consider the second noble truth, but it's the second liberating insight, is actually arising.

[35:39]

Just you're seeing suffering arising. Okay, with no link to causality, or there's no... No link to causality. He's not claiming he understands the source of suffering. In a sense, yes. And you see that it seems pretty clear that... the early strata literature, the early teachings attributed to the Buddha, it very much wants to avoid causal language. And some people say that the whole idea of dependent origination is a way of avoiding causal language. It's conditional rather than causal. And these four liberating insights can be stated formulaically as X, the arising of X, the seizing of X, and the way leading to the seizing of X. So there are many, many things in the suttas that emphasize you see it this way.

[36:43]

See it as X, see it as it is, see its arising, see its seizing, and seeing the way. I can give you a list of some of the things that are referred to that way. One of the most important ones is the five aggregates. In terms of your question about... I'm not sure if the Buddha himself experienced liberation, seeing the arising and seizing of the five aggregates, the five kandhas. But there's a story in the suttas of a former Buddha, Vipassi. And his enlightenment is described by him seeing the arising and seizing of the five aggregates. But you see many places in the suttas... that the aggregates, the skandhas, are seen as empty, seeing them arising and passing, the faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind, pleasure, pain, joy, unhappiness, and equanimity, views, remorse, taints, and even positive qualities such as the five faculties, like faith and energy and mindfulness and concentration and wisdom.

[37:48]

that all these can be, when your mindfulness and concentration is strong, if you're very much in the present moment, you basically see everything that can be qualified as an experience, a perception, a thought, a feeling, whatever it might be, arising and passing, arising and seizing. And so it's not just suffering, but it's just basically a phenomenal world that's seen this way. And so this is an insight that gets repeated over and over again in the text. And once I made this distinction, you could see this different in the text, all kinds of things started to fit in place much better than they did before. And I don't know if some, one of the places that, if you guys, I don't know how many of you have spent much time with the Four Noble Truths, but, so that one of the classic descriptions of the Four Noble Truths says that, you know, the Fourth Noble Truth is the Eightfold Path. And the first step of the Eightfold Path is right view. And a very common, from the suttas, people have, from something that says in the suttas, people will say, and I've said this as a teacher, and right view is viewing, having the perspective on our life of the Four Noble Truths.

[39:03]

But it's a little bit odd, right? The Four Noble Truths, and then you're explaining the Four Noble Truths as the right view, and then you're kind of like, the first step of the Eightfold Path is understanding the Four Noble Truths. you know, it's kind of like embedded within. The definition, you know, it's kind of embedded within. But it doesn't actually say the four noble truths are right view. What it says is the definition of right view is seeing suffering, the arising of suffering, the seizing of suffering, and the way leading to the seizing of suffering. In other words, it's the four liberating insights which are right view, not the four noble truths. And so that way you don't have this, you have to kind of do this complicated gymnastics. What do you mean that You know, the very thing you're explaining is in the definition. Yes. Yes. Would you say or did you observe in this, in your study, through the four insights and the four noble truths, that there were different methods associated with the accomplishment of the realization of either one?

[40:15]

Could you speak to that? Yeah. When the Buddha attained the four liberating insights, he did it in the fourth jhana. He did it in deep meditation practice, the fourth level of absorption. The descriptions are his mind was purified, bright, unblemished, rid of imperfection, malleable, wieldy, steady, and attained to imperturbability. So the mind is very, very quiet, very still, very soft in the fourth jhana. So there's something about that stillness and quiet of the mind that allows for a very strong, clear perception of this arising and passing. The Four Noble Truths are always presented as a doctrine, as a teaching. It's never referred to directly as someone's experience. And so there's a difference.

[41:17]

One's a description of realization and the other is a doctrine of teaching. And that's a big difference. Yes? How important is it to know why we were born? Like what our craving was? because how much time do I have to fake why I'm born female or Asian when I have to like function in society and I can't change well I'm not going to give such change and make myself look non-Asian but and also when the Buddha Yes, that's right.

[42:31]

So I think the Buddha didn't put much emphasis on the importance of back in Indian time, of caste, of color, of status, of, you know, I think that some people would say that he was Asian, and he was fine with that. But to understand, and there's not much emphasis on understanding the past karma is not so important. And you don't have to go back in time to understand what was the craving that got you born. You have to uproot this logic of people who see it through the filter of rebirth. What you have to do is to uproot the craving that's inside of you to be born again in the future. So you don't have to go back and understand the past. You have to understand that that particular craving is operating now. And if you uproot that, then at the time you die, then there's no more continuation. Does that make sense? So you don't have to go back and understand. And you can just go forward with the soft mind.

[43:41]

Yes. I have two loosely related questions. The first one is, you know, and listening to your methodology here, it kind of reminds me of biblical scholarship, you know, teasing apart who wrote certain passages, what were influences, what they might have in mind. And I'm kind of wondering how far along that is on Buddhism. And then the second one is on the rebirth. I always thought there was kind of a real... And I assumed that the whole doctrine of rebirth came because that was sort of, that was like the common accepted thing in Billy's time. Sort of everybody believed it, so he had to use that. But I just thought that it was kind of a fundamental contradiction in the sense that if you're reborn, who is this view of getting reborn? Right. So the first question is that... Yes, this is kind of like the careful textual work of biblical scholarship that we do.

[44:43]

And a little bit to defend it is that one of the reasons I'm interested in this is to in the completely naive and hopeless hope that I can free Buddhism of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism. You know, because if you take something that's so core to what everybody thinks, this is what Buddhism is, and you can show that actually the Buddha didn't teach this, then it kind of like, you know, the fundamentalists are a little bit more on like, wait a minute, what do I stand on now? And so that's a little bit my Zen roots, right? Because the idea of pulling the rug from everything you hold on to and believe is a pretty wonderful thing, right? So to do something Buddhist like this to Buddhism is a pretty great thing. Where are we in the terms of the level or the development of Buddhist scholarship compared to biblical scholarship?

[45:47]

I don't know, but we're probably maybe 150 years behind. So then the second question had to do about the rebirth. What I present to you today, I feel like I'm standing on somewhat solid ground in terms of what the texts say and representing it well. I don't feel like I can represent the text well in terms of this rebirth thing. Is this really a central aspect and necessary aspect of what the Buddha taught? Or is it later something, interpolations as part of the culture that came in, emphasized it? It was clear that at the time of the Buddha, not everyone believed in rebirth. And how pervasive it was is a little bit uncertain. We don't have a lot of texts that indicate and tell us, except the Buddhist texts, and they're kind of self-serving.

[46:51]

Or they describe it in their own terms. So I don't really know how important it is. What I do know is a couple of things about rebirth in the early texts. One is that there are a number of important texts, early literature, where rebirth is not important. There's a text I talked about here some years ago called the Book of Eights, Atagavaga. Some scholars think it's probably the earliest, among the earliest literature in Buddhism, predates some of the suttas even that we have. And in there, not only is there no emphasis on rebirth, it actually kind of says that it's kind of delusion or kind of a waste of time to spend any time being concerned with becoming and non-becoming, whether being born and not being born. So that text seems to indicate that there's no interest in it. And then when the Buddha taught his own son, we have a number of places where he teaches his son, there's no mention of rebirth.

[47:59]

But maybe that was just... You don't have to mention something which everyone understands, right? So maybe it was... Well, you know. But I find that if you're not interested in rebirth as part of your Buddhism, there's plenty of examples in the ancient tradition where you don't have to refer to rebirth or there's no reference to rebirth for some of the core teachings. Make sense? So the four elaborating insights, for example, are so much in the present moment that you don't need to be involved in the question of rebirth in those. So I saw someone's hand here. Yes. I feel a little out of bounds asking this question because I'm not even sure it's a real question. You talked about the 12-link chain and that people were holding different positions with regard to when actually or how the Buddha received and expressed that insight.

[49:04]

So my question is, does holding to the Four Noble Truths or holding to what you are proposing cast an inflection or open up the 12-fold chain? Does it have some bearing on it? Yes. Probably, but I don't know what it is. So I said there's five explanations for the Four Noble Truths. One of them is in terms of the Twelfthfold Dependent Origination. The second Noble Truth, the Truth of the Arising of Suffering, the Noble Truth of the Arising of Suffering, is described as the Twelfthfold Chain, with ignorance as a condition...

[50:05]

there arises sankaras. With sankaras, mental formations, there arises consciousness and so forth, right? And then the cessation, the third noble truth is defined by the cessation of all those in reverse order. So there's a very direct connection between the four noble truths and dependent origination. But how are we supposed to understand this? and what the relationship is between each of these links, and what's the relationship with the whole thing. I don't have any confidence that I know what's going on yet in the text. Yeah? Letting go of the craving to be reborn, would you say that's synonymous with accepting death? Or do you know, what is that? That's a good question. I don't know if it has to be synonymous. And I don't know if we need to accept death.

[51:11]

I mean, it's certainly a person who could accept death and be more at ease about dying. But I kind of think that even better than accepting death is not to be concerned with it. You know, so, you know, you're this moment here. You know, even if you have a minute left to live, it's this moment. There's something very powerful in this. I feel like part of the benefit of my practice, years of practice, years of sitting in the zendos, is a tremendous appreciation for this moment. And it's like, this is what's real. If anything's real. My imagination of the future is not real. And if death is an imagination, death from a minute from now is, you know, it's a little bit, you know, it's kind of the imagination of the future. And I don't know how it'll be for me, but, those times, but, There's something, you know, I imagine something so powerful and compelling about this moment and being at peace with this moment that it doesn't require accepting.

[52:17]

Accepting already means that there's a need, there's something going on in you, that there's fear or reluctance or something. And maybe that, it's more important maybe to let go of that fear, let go of that reluctance. And then there's no need to accept. Does that make sense? Yes. What is the difference between not being concerned with death and ignorance of death? Oh. How often are you concerned about how the Earth is going around the sun? We're kind of dependent on it, and we might, you know, maybe if gravity shifts, we'll kind of like go off out in space, and you probably don't think very much about it. the orbit of the earth around the sun, right? You're not ignorant about it, but you're not concerned with it. You don't have to accept it. So maybe, is it a little bit like that? You can know that death is coming. You don't have to be ignorant about it.

[53:19]

You don't have to be denying it. I know people who just don't want to talk about it, they push it away. But you can know it's happening, but it doesn't have to be a concern. Particularly, you should get your affairs in order so other people don't have to do it. Yes. She asked part of my question. Yes. And my question was whether the craving for rebirth and the craving to continue living this life are related. And I think you somewhat answered that. It's really not a very interesting question. And the second part of my question was sort of the temporal aspect of that. And I'm trying to think of the sort of mystic Christian notion that this is eternity now. This is the paradise. And is there a way, is it similar to the notion that ordinary life, this is it?

[54:25]

Or it's not a question, it's a statement. For you, that's that way. Well, I'm losing myself in my hummingbird brain here. I see. Oh, I see. Okay, well, maybe if I understand the question, is there some way in which some insight, some understanding, some way of being present here and now is the paradise, is the pure, in Buddhist terms, is the pure land? Or is there somehow the goal someplace else, you know, some other world and all that? And... And there are teachings, especially Mahayana has the most explicit teachings like this, that if your mind is pure, all things are pure. And you'll see the pure land right here, for example. If the reference point for this discussion is these early suttas, these early texts, then they don't say that there. But I think they don't say it because this early literature is psychological and not

[55:32]

metaphysical. They're not so interested in defining, describing, validating the world out there as being anything at all. It can be what it is. The early tradition, I would argue, is neither world-affirming or world-denying. But rather, it's becoming free of suffering. becoming free of suffering. And once you're free of suffering, then you don't suffer. And then, you know, all kinds of interesting, all kinds of things are interesting. You know, all kinds of things are interesting and how you see the world if you don't have the forces of craving and forces of hate and greed. You're probably going to see the world more often in more favorable ways than if you never have enough, and you're always angry at people.

[56:34]

And so I think it lends itself to a much more friendly kind of attitude and vision of what the world we live in. But I don't think this early tradition wants to make a claim, this world is the paradise, this is it. It can be what it is, but I'm not suffering, so that's good enough. Yes? I was really interested when you were talking about part of your intention to... do this work is to combat Buddhist fundamentalism, or at least to get people to doubt or reconsider this attachment to the Four Noble Truths as core teaching. And as you were speaking throughout this time and lots of little details, I was wondering, what would you like lay practitioners to take from this? Or the people here? how would you like this to impact their practice or their understanding of Buddhism?

[57:36]

Like, is it primarily to kind of, in the same way the Heart Sutra shakes up our attachment to the teachings themselves, that we would also have a looseness around the teaching? Or is there, yeah, I would just like you to speak more about that. So what is the takeaway that I'd like for you to have today? Yes. you know, if I could, if you could really take it home with you, then the one thing I'd like to convey is don't suffer. And, you know, make not suffering your primary practice. Someone asked me recently, what's your practice? And I said, they were expecting me to kind of describe, you know, Vipassana or Zen or, you know, some detailed kind of technique.

[58:38]

And I said, my primary practice is not to suffer. Or try not to, at least. So, I mean, if that's, if I can get bad as a takeaway, I'd be happy. In terms of, you know, actually what I'm saying here, in terms of this thing about fundamentalism, I think that I would like people to be a little bit more discerning than they usually are. And maybe questioning and when they hear teachings, when they read teachings, and say, is this really right? Or how does this work? And what's really being said here? And also, what is the purpose for why people are saying something? If the purpose of the Dharma teacher is to really help you in the moment, they can say a lot of different skillful means things. But if they're trying to lay a trip on you about this is what Buddhism is, And only if you believe this are you Buddhist. Then you can kind of say, well, let's look at where that comes from. Maybe we don't have to believe it so automatically.

[59:39]

Let's go look and where does that come from? What texts are they referring to? What teachings are they referring to? Where do they have the authority for these kinds of claims? So I think being able to... That fundamentalism is a... religious teachings where you take a body of literature, text, Bibles, and you say that the truth is found there and only there. And there's no questioning of it. And I think that there's plenty of room for questioning and not to analyze and to look and to question these things. And I think it's a good thing to do. Do you think the same fundamentalism could then, supposing this knowledge became well-known, people was dispersed widely and scholars and teachers started teaching that it's the four liberating insights and that the second one is about arising and cessation. Do you think people could then just become stuck on or become fundamentalists about this idea of the three basic characteristics?

[60:47]

Of course. Suffering. That's what religious people do. So, you know, that's what people do. They hang on to teachings. This is it. They want some security. They want this to be this way. So, you know, I don't know. It's probably my neurosis or whatever that I feel somehow I want to kind of counter fundamentalism. I don't know. It's probably hopeless. And probably it's my own hang-up. But I do have this thing where it motivates me a little bit to do this. I mean, not the only motivation, but it's a little bit behind it. Does that make sense? Yeah. but in terms of I would say a little bit more of what your question responds to it is that I do think it's helpful to make the distinction between the four liberating insights and the four noble truths so we can understand something about the content of the Buddha's enlightenment experience and because to understand it as the four noble truths people are kind of scratching their heads no one really took it that seriously the four noble truths that's what he realized and

[61:50]

But when it's the four liberating insights, to see that that's really what was going on there. That's something that people in the modern world have deep insight in. There are meditators in this day who have very deep insight into seeing arising and passing. And this validates this as being important in being the path. And also points a finger at what is important to see. This is something to be oriented towards. to see impermanence in the moment, in the present moment. It's not about thinking about teachings. It's not about planning for better futures. It's really not just hanging out. It's really being present to such a degree that the emptiness of the moment kind of manifests in a clear way. So I think that gets shown. But I hope that people don't forget about the Four Noble Truths. I think the Four Noble Truths, as they've come down to us, even as a study of cause, is a brilliant teaching. And I like teaching it.

[62:51]

And I think it's, you know, I hope that this research doesn't result in people now kind of discarding the Four Noble Truths because the Buddha didn't really teach it, you know, or it wasn't so important for him. I think it has a lot of value. But what I hope it does is helps us free us up a little bit to be a little more creative. And also... to understand that when people teach the Four Noble Truths, they are being creative. And then we don't take them as being the custodians of truth. It's their skillful means at this particular time, maybe for them, and then we can engage with it more creatively as skillful means. How is this useful for me? And the question of cause, you know, sometimes it's useful to look for cause, and sometimes looking for cause is a dead end. Yeah. Oh, we have to stop. But I want to say one more thing. Great. about this thing about the cause, that the Four Noble Truths is the cause of suffering. And so that idea started to appear at some point in the Theravod tradition.

[63:54]

Until down to the modern world, it's pretty common to understand it as cause. When exactly it started becoming normative, the common interpretation, I don't know. But here's what's interesting, is that the first... In the surviving literature... the beginning of this notion that we're focusing on the cause of suffering, and the cause is thirst, as a cause, the word cause, is in the lineage of texts belonging to the Buddhist nuns. The bhikkhuni literature. And that's where it begins. And I think it's a great thing. And so why is it? Why is it the nuns? Why does it appear in the nuns' literature before it appears in the Monk's literature. And I look upon it very favorably. So what was going on there? So I don't know if anyone... I've only been thinking about this for the last week. But I was thinking that maybe the women who were composing texts in the ancient world, maybe they were more practical than men.

[65:04]

Or they were more interested in the practical details of life. And they wanted something that had more wide application in their lives than this insight into arising and passing. The deep insight into arising and passing, to really do it deeply in this tradition, is a meditation experience. Something happens with a strong, concentrated mind. To start seeing the Four Noble Truths as cause is something that makes the Four Noble Truths widely applicable in life, in all life. And this wide application in daily life and the rest of our life is part of the reason I like this causal explanation of Four Noble Truths. So that's one theory I have. The women are more practical or more down to earth. They're wanting to apply it more for the rest of their life. Okay, thank you. 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.

[66:06]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

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