We'll just sit on park benches and try to read the wind. I said, good morning, everybody. Here we are. How's that? Can you hear me? Thank you. First of all, a confession. I'm appearing before you today in less than what is called regulation garb. And which, according to somebody in my family, is another example of an outrageous ego. And I feel it's perfectly all right. I'm going to indulge myself at four score years. So, there it is. Also, I'm actually sitting in, instead of Linda Ruth Kotz, our senior internment, Abbott and teacher, who was called away unexpectedly because of her husband, Steve's mother died.

[01:19]

So she's in L.A. For some reason, I actually made a outline for myself. I thought it'd be safer that way, save you from a lot of rambling around. I'm naming it grasping and labeling, or prepare to be misunderstood. So in some sense, In a very real sense, I want to talk today, if I can somehow reach the subject of the enormity or the enormousness of the role that language plays in our life.

[02:25]

We just finished the words of that last... to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words, and already we're talking about language. But what is the Tathagata? Well, in one sense, the Tathagata is just another name for Buddha, or the one who is enlightened. But it has actually two ways to parse it. One way is that it means the one who just comes, has just come. The one who just comes. And another way to parse it is the one that has just gone. So sometimes the Tathagata, which is the name that in the early canon, Buddha referred to himself as the Tathagata.

[03:34]

The one that just comes and the one that just goes, the one that you can't quite get hold of. because the Tathagata is not a thing that can be contained by any form or symbol, idea, concept, or even experience. At least that is one side of the story of the Tathagata's words, is that is about actually saying nothing. It is that condition before the arising of words, before language turns phenomena into a semiotic nightmare. I was just thinking of this being an outrageous ego, another way of which we use words to determine who we think we are.

[04:44]

Tathagata's words somehow also have to be part of that, you see. Just come and just gone. We're seeking for a definition of ourselves by which we can feel some ultimate sense of our reality. But every time we try to reach for that, every time we set up a program or a strategy or a way, we never quite catch it. Like I say, it's like trying to read the wind. That's the voice of the Thagata. It doesn't mean that our language is not useful. We need it. We are a thinking animal, a thinking head. That is also our... the source of our suffering.

[05:46]

The enormous power and weight of words and their influence on our life, since we have been determined by the values inherent in language since our first breath almost, we're always trying to redefine ourselves in new ways, in new paradigms, in new situations, with new imagery and and which is a natural thing to do except that we reify it. We take our words and our concepts and our views of who we think we are that have been given to us actually, given to us. Those reference points by which this I can operate from necessary to conduct business in this particular dimension of space and time that we call here and now. Now, we don't think we can understand this and hear this, and as we're hearing it, we should, as practitioners of the Buddha way, become aware of our reaction to what we hear.

[06:54]

So whatever messages or descriptions or definitions that you're hearing coming from my wife today... in my life today, in my mouth today. What are the images, stories, and so on? Notice your reaction to the information that's coming in. Basically three reactions. Oh, that's interesting, I like it. Pull it in closer. That reifies or that supports a certain definition of myself. Well, that one, I don't think so. I don't like it. I reject it. It's not so. I don't want to hear it. Or, I don't know. Maybe yes, maybe no. And if you notice the reactive tendencies that we have, it's usually one of the three. Very happening, of course. Rapid succession.

[07:58]

Bang, bang, [...] bang. So as you hear me speak, and as I hear myself speak, using this language that we have learned in order to communicate and build up a world that we know is not solid, but which we treat as if it is somehow here always for us to witness. At some point, when you tune out, notice that. Your mind goes away. This is a practice that you can always do anywhere at any time. under any situation. Notice what is reacting, what you are feeling, what's coming up for you right now as you hear these words, that this person playing this role in this costume before you today in this context in which we all came together already prepared to learn something. And this we have been doing as long as we can remember and will continue to do until we take the next step, whatever.

[09:03]

So lately, in this cyber age, caught up in skimming or surfing through the net one day, I came upon a quiz that caught my eye. It was a quiz that would help profile your religious preferences, psychology and so on. 50 questions. Find out what you really believe. Find out who you really are now, in terms of where it gets serious. So I thought, well, why not? I know who I am. I don't think I went so far as to say that to myself. Anyway, I took the test. And I'm here to tell you that I am not a Buddhist.

[10:08]

Sorry, folks. It turns out that I'm actually, get ready for this one, a universal humanist. I'm a universal humanist. Well, by God, I'll be down, you know. You know, I thought I was a Buddhist, but maybe I'm a... So anyway, I decided, well, I better find out what the, I never heard of this da, you know. Maybe everybody knows what this is but me, a universal humanist. Of course, we've all been subjected or acquainted with this question of humanism, but a universal humanism, that sounded like a good idea. So I looked it up and it turns out it came up in the 60s. It was an actual movement by people. And oh, I even, wrote somewhere there. Universal humanist, placing the human being as the central value and concern in such a way, this is the point, that nothing is above the human being and no human being is above another.

[11:15]

Affirm the equality of all human beings, recognizing cultural diversity and so on. Sure, okay. Now, this talk is not about, you know, weighing the merits of a view over here called Buddhism against something over here called humanism. It's more of an overview of, isn't it interesting the way we describe ourselves? How we come to feel ourselves through language, through definition. As I thought about this, I began to think about, I went outside, I remember, it was one of those beautiful days. Recently, the wind blowing off the ocean, high blue sky, high blue sky, wind blowing off the ocean, wonderful day. I'm out there thinking, and I sit down and I thought, well, am I a Buddhist universal humanist?

[12:17]

Or am I a universal humanist Buddhist? And was there some sort of pecking order there in terms of importance? And I realized that this kind of question, I mean, we laugh about it now, but actually this kind of question has been a perplexing question in my life. I don't know about you, but just, will the real me stand up and be counted? Where is that, you know? So I begin to think of the various ways I have been called or referred to, either by myself, the context I'm in, or by somebody else. They were capitalists. socialist, communist, atheist, anarchist, nonconformist, existentialist, individualist, fatalist, elitist, defeatist, realist, escapist, cultist, optimist. Actually, I was a card-carrying optimist once.

[13:19]

True. I don't know if it's still in existence, but there used to be something called the Optimist Club. Is that still? It was... Anyway, in those days it was all men, and the office sent me to represent them because it was good for business. By the way, I do this. I put quotes upon everything I say in the world. So anyway, I go to a lot of luncheons and eat a lot of tuna fish salad. Listen, a lot of inspirational messages. And there's nothing wrong with it. It was, you know, it was... Up, up, an upper. Supposed to make you feel good about your life. Nothing wrong with that. I'm not laughing at that. It's just that it was great until the office folded. I was out of the job and I turned pessimist overnight. This is true, actually.

[14:21]

Which felt actually a little safer in this world with things as they are. To be a little bit skeptical, at least. If not, go so far as to say you're optimistic. And also, of course, I learned over time that I am also an Aquarian. Think of that. A tragic romantic. I love that one. In the Enneagram, I'm supposedly a tragic romantic. A cynic. A bohemian. A beatnik. A hippie. Also referred to in that kind of male jive as man, boss, chief, slick, slim, slug, stud, coot, and dude. You know, it is kind of funny. We can look at language that way and the way it shapes our reactions in the world and how we feel about ourselves.

[15:22]

And I think of the story now about, you know, How many people have never been here before? Well, you're lucky. I mean, it's always very strange, these stories and so on. But since you have anything to compare with it, it's called Beginner's Mind. It's good, it's a good place to be. What's happening here? You don't know yet, you haven't picked up all the signals yet. Read all the signs and signifiers that are floating around here, but you'll get the hang of it in a minute. So anyway, one of the great Zen koans is the first case of the Blue Cliff Record in which Bodhidharma, the kind of legendary figure that supposedly introduced Zen Buddhism to China in the 6th century, is summoned by the emperor whose name is Wu of Liang to come before him because Emperor Wu now, after having reconciled the country and much bloodshed and so on, has finally decided he'd better find out how to live his life now and has become a Buddhist and is doing good works and is financing monasteries and so on.

[16:44]

He hears about this holy man from this barbarian from India who's walking around the country with a long beard. Anyway, he's in town and he's got a message and Emperor Wu wants to meet him. So he comes in front of Emperor Wu and Emperor Wu tells him, he says, here's what I've been doing for the Dharma and good deeds, good deeds, supporting monks and raising funds and so on, and trying to pass on a way of living in the world that is better than, you know, sparing one another. So what merit is there in this? Because, you see, merit's a big thing in Buddhism, and it comes from India, the idea that you accrue merit through good deeds, through those things that are helpful in human life and so on, because there's an idea that goes with it, you're going to be born again. And somehow you get from that, you carry... You carry a story with you, apparently. This is one view, you see. So he says, what merit is there?

[17:46]

And Bodhidharma says, no merit. He's the king, after all. He's the emperor, after all. He can take this man's head at any moment. If he doesn't like what he hears about himself in language from somebody else who's supposed to be wise, remember, this is big. This guy's identity is being focused around what this man tells him He's open enough to hear another message. Then he says, okay. He says, well, what are the highest teachings of the holy truths? Talking about the canon, the Dharma. Bodhidharma says, nothing holy, vast emptiness. Pause, you know. Everybody has to try to chew on that one for a moment. He probably sighs and says, all right, tell me this. Who is it standing in front of me? Bodhidharma says, I don't know Walks away. Now, if I had come before Bodhidharma, you see, he said, who are you?

[18:49]

I'd say, let me get my list out. You know? I'm a, what am I again? I'm a, yeah, I'm a, well, yeah, I'm a tragic romantic, Aquarian, universal humanist, Buddhist. I know who I am. I've got the paper, I've got the, I can prove it. Somebody wrote it on the back here. That's what I am. And I buy it. And so do you. And we come together and tell stories about it. Because we can't live without stories. And one of the stories, big story, is this. That language or the world we live in, the conventional world, is made up of these symbols and language. But the language has no ultimate, see, or no ultimate significance or meaning at all. It is empty of inherent existence. That is the fundamental teaching of the middle way truth.

[19:50]

All phenomena, people, place things, ideas, mental content, have no ultimate essence or substance that can be found upon investigation. Buddhism. Form is empty. It is empty of inherent existence. That's one point of view. And we live in this conventional world made up of language and values and so on, that are founded on verbally established, a nominalism. But it is empty. But we don't treat it as empty. We don't treat it as empty, or we treat it as ultimate. But in Buddhism, the middle way, there are two truths, the ultimate and the conventional. particular point of view called the middle way path, the ultimate and the conventional are the same things seen from two different perspectives. One perspective is seen that no phenomena of any kind, including my reactive tendencies to it, has any ultimate substance whatsoever.

[20:53]

And to live from that disposition in the midst of the everyday world, as it is conventionally described, in which nothing can be grasped, nothing can be attained, nothing can be held onto, but can be understood intellectually, inferentially, and because of the power of language, actually free. That is the Madhyamaka middleweight position. The ontological status of both conventional and ultimate are the same. And another point of view, quite different from this, is there is no objective world whatsoever. It is all imagined. It is all a projection. Projection of something called mind only, citta-matra in Buddhism. Everything is a projection of mind, and emptiness is not a question of phenomena being empty. It is a question of the emptiness of the duality of self and other. That has different consequences than seeing that all conventional reality is empty of inherent existence.

[22:02]

Substance is equated the same way in its interdependency from saying there is no such thing as a world out there. It is all an invention of mind, a projection, a story. It is no more real than smoke in the wind. There is no conventional world. That is disposition. But the emptiness that is experienced in this is a thing that can be experienced and is... a substrat or an eternal or an ungraspable something, nothing that underlies everything. It's called Buddha mind or it is called the Godhead. This is a whole other position. And we like this position because it gives us something to believe in. That underneath there is this basic thing we call God, spirit, We can't remember a time we have not been here, yet we can't get hold of anything that is here. We call it consciousness and so on.

[23:07]

So there's that whole idea. And these two ideas, these two schools, called the Chitta Matra, or Mind Only School, and the Madhyamaka, or Middle Way School, both understand the emptiness of all phenomena. But in one case, the second case I'm talking about, it's something that we can experience. And it's called enlightenment. It's called waking up. in which all the usual contractions brought on by language and our habitualizations since we've been born drop away suddenly. Everything just appears as it is, but there's no attachment to it. It's as if you're freed. And that can happen to anybody at any time. It actually happens every night when you go into deep sleep. But there's no witnessing awareness at that moment. So there's two ways that from the very beginning of Buddhism has been set out to achieve a certain end. One says it is in time, it is something that has to be gained over days, months, years, lifetimes.

[24:09]

An idea of a practice in time in which something can be achieved. The other says, look... I don't care about yesterday or tomorrow or the next morning or the next afternoon. What is this phenomenon? Show me what this is. If it isn't in this moment, when the hell is it? If we don't know now, if we're not perfect now, when are we ever going to be? And you said there's no self. So what is the self that you can't find that is progressing to get better? Another point of view. But built in with that is the awareness, growing awareness, that it is that and that exactly, a point of view. And there's no way out of it. You're going to have a point of view. Then the more you strive to get away from point of view, establishing more points of view, more philosophy and so on, the further you get from it.

[25:14]

There's an old saying from one view that the fabled musk ox travels the world over for the source of the scent that is itself. So the thing is set up so there's this desire mode, this grasping mode, feed me, feed me, feed me. Food first, sex then, give me the world. I want to know what this is. It's a very dense place we are in, vibration-wise. We feel it, we experience it as pain. The pain is a passage of, the pain comes from the feeling that there is nothing ultimately to be grasped. So, that's the kind of, now are you reacting to this? Are you noticing how you're going? I'm gonna think about that, see? Anyway, over the years, struggling with these things myself, reading and all the commentaries and so on, and the different schools, I made a little papouli, as it were, of what other people have said about this very thing I'm trying to say with you today.

[26:39]

And I think if, by just reading some of these entries that I have put down, without ascribing any particular author to them, they come actually from the tradition, This tradition, other religious traditions come from psychology, come from physics. Science, okay. Here's one. These are all just different. We attach to these impermanent dream forms, and when they disappear, we're left with all our craving and clinging tendencies over and over. All our attempts to hold on, to survive, to win... to remain enamored of the event of experience, large or small, gross or subtle, but we can't at bottom ultimately account for the mere existence or presence of any of it. The whole construct of conditioned existence serves only the great purpose of realization. Because what we're talking about, all of this, this is not just more stuff to amuse us maybe, although it does,

[27:42]

But it has a soteriological, it has a salvific. With going through this, it changes the perception we have of how we have experienced the world previously. And with that kind of inspiration, we change the paradigm. Anyway, that's another view. The whole construct of conditioned existence serves only the great purpose of realization. The secondary purposes you devise in your attachments are not served. They are constantly threatened and ultimately defeated or undermined. Our needs are always defeated. The most important work of a teacher is not to communicate all kinds of experiences, histories, functional realizations, and all the rest of it, though they may occur and do occur. Fundamentally, the teacher, the guru communicates the divine as your condition. Communicates the divine as your condition and nothing but that is fundamentally important.

[28:44]

So if we don't have a teaching that teaches us that our fundamental condition is already liberate, already divine, and are trying to hold on with some kind of philosophy and so on. The whole idea of Zen was to bring us into the moment and wake us up That this is the crucial event. This is the divine event arising now under whatever condition. We don't believe it. How can we? Everything's changing. We're losing everything. The oceans, the trees, uncles just disappeared. Mother's sick. Baby is coming up into a world we don't know what's going to happen. Big story there. How can it be divine? The divine is realized moment to moment as your condition. That is what spiritual life is all about. Experiential states, however glorious or terrible, are secondary and not to be valued ultimately.

[29:49]

It is true that this anxiety you discover in yourself, this anxiety that arises from separation, this emotion, is not healed by any other arrangement. It is itself. that condition of our awareness by which we are moved to fulfill the law, to make this sacrifice of egoic concerns, and it is not otherwise removed. Now, where do we want to practice? We want to find out a way. If you don't live by recognition of this true nature, quote-unquote, all your experiences, all your enjoyments lead to attachment only, and reinforce habitual, ritualized behavior, craving for contact, craving for experiences, craving for repetition, in which we are constantly anxious, ill at ease, suffering reactive emotions, endlessly thinking, mulling over things mentally, as if trying to solve some hidden problem, knotted up in the body, always active to find some pleasurable condition that will last, that will fulfill us.

[30:58]

If you recognize this matter arising here, you are not bound by that reaction to that course, that ceremony. You're relieved of it. And paradoxically, even though there is all this transcendent delight, there is not a single thing, not a single event, a single change or modification. No birth, no death. Seppo visited Tokusan. This is a Zen story. then Tosu three times, then Tosan nine times. These are monks going back and forth with teachers. Without result, waking up. And at last asked Tokusan, is it possible for me too to share with the Buddhas and ancestors in the supreme teaching? Tokusan struck him with his staff saying, what on earth are you talking about? What on earth are you talking about? The next day, Seppo asked for an explanation. Tosan said, my religion has no words and sentences.

[32:02]

It has nothing to give anybody. Why? When it says then, Seppo was enlightened. What did Seppo find out? He is already, always already that case, that condition. It never has been anything else but. That is the message. I won't ask for hands of how many of you believe it. But look at your reaction. Our body is the Bodhi tree. Our body is the Bodhi tree and our mind a bright mirror. Carefully wipe them hour by hour and let no dust alight. Other poem. There is no Bodhi tree, nor bright mirror, since all is void, where can dust alight?

[33:04]

If you could clearly see that this mind of yours is actually non-existent, you would wake up and never be disturbed by any circumstance. In my view, there is no Buddha or sentient being, no past or present. There is nothing to study or attain, no loss or gain. Time is not necessary for waking up from delusional mind. Why do you hurriedly travel around wearing down the soles of your shoes? What are you looking for? There is no Buddha to seek, no way to attain, no Dharma to possess. It is wrong to seek the Buddha with the actual body. If you wish to know your true mind, you should know that it does not stay with you nor stay away from you. The true Buddha has no figure. The true way has no form. The true Dharma has no phase. May you begin to get a taste?

[34:13]

The phenomenal world is nothing but thought. define me in words if you try to nail me down in a box of cold words that box will be a coffin because I do not know who I am I am an astounding lucid condition I suddenly realized I knew with unmistakable clarity that the universe as it is within this present moment is absolutely complete and perfect the present moment was whole and integrated My sense of a fundamental separateness was gone. I, quote-unquote, was still here, but any anxiety I'd ever felt was completely eliminated. All I knew and felt was the complete perfection of the present moment. When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are, when that isn't there anymore,

[35:21]

You are not in conflict with yourself. When the movement in the direction of becoming something other than what you are, and it isn't there anymore, that movement, you are not any longer in conflict with yourself. This so-called self-realization is a discovery that there is no self to discover. That will be a very shocking thing to you because it's going to blast every nerve in your body. There is no practice or sadhana necessary, no purification, no preparation for this kind of thing to happen to you. If you want a metaphor for complete nirvana, look at the ashes in the stove. That's what nirvana means, actually, the burning out of something. The idea was that you burn up all of the desired body, the grasping body. and you're left like cold ashes. That was an Indian model, you see. Americans find that pretty difficult in the 21st century to accept.

[36:24]

However, if you want to find a metaphor for complete nirvana, look at the ashes in the stove. If you want a metaphor for complete nirvana, that was incomplete nirvana first, what do you see when the ashes have been blown away? I am that which I know I am. There are many persons who have a great attachment to their own individuality. They want first and foremost to remain as an individual and then search, for they are not prepared to lose their individuality. While retaining their individuality, they want to find the truth. But in this process, you must get rid of the individuality itself. If you really find out who you are, you will see that you are not an individual. You are not a person. You are not a body. People who cling to their identity are not fit for this knowledge.

[37:26]

He's talking about me. In the spiritual domain, I would like to fire all gurus and transpersonal psychologists who use stage-by-stage development. explaining experiences like mine as nirvikalpa samadhi or whatever, I would like to see the term self, capital S, self-actualization, self-realization, self-transcendence, expunged from psychological and spiritual literature, reserving the word strictly for the empirical self of everyday life. It is the whole obfuscating concept of self which needs to be transcended, for in my experience of awakening, there has never been to transform, actualize, realize, or transcend. Uh-oh. I'm getting nailed to the wall here. With every breath you breathe in, you breathe in 10 to the power of 20 atoms from the universe.

[38:28]

An astrological amount of raw material comes into your body from somewhere else. With every out-breath, the same is true. From every cell of your body, you're literally breathing out bits and pieces of your heart and kidneys and brain tissue. And technically speaking, we are sharing our organs with one another all the time. In just the last three weeks, a quadrillion atoms have circulated through your body that have gone through every other living species on the planet. Think of a tree in Africa, a squirrel in Siberia, a farmer in China, and right there, At this moment, you have in your body at least the quadrilium atoms, that's 10 followed by 15 zeros, that were circulating there about three weeks ago. In about one year, you will replace 98% of all the atoms in your body, a new liver every six weeks, a new skin once a month, a new stomach lining every five days, and even the DNA, which holds the memories of millions of years of evolution, comes and goes.

[39:31]

every six weeks like migratory birds. So if you think you are your physical body, which body are you talking about? Maybe one or two more and then we'll wind it up. Ninety percent, 99.9% of everything you think and do is for the sake of yourself. And there isn't one. The fool gets rid of phenomena but not the mind. The wise get rid of mind but not phenomena. Who are you? said the caterpillar. Alice replied rather shyly, I hardly know sir, just at present. At least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have changed since then.

[40:35]

What do you mean by that, said the caterpillar sternly. Explain yourself. I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, sir, said Alice, because I'm not myself, you see. I don't see, said the caterpillar. Sometimes we see, sometimes we don't. Sometimes we think we see, sometimes we think we don't. But we always think we are what we think, what we think we are. Well, that's a lot of preaching. But I've had that on my mind for a long time, just wanting to sit down and say, here are the postures, here are the way we posture ourselves, situate ourselves. in a kind of dilemma, looking, searching for something that is already the case, which we know, we've heard it so many times, but we can't help it, can we?

[41:43]

We keep doing it, we just do. Or develop some compassion for this poor fool that keeps doing this thing over and over and over and over again, called me. You know, most of us here are very ashamed to admit that most of the time we're really very concerned with me. But, We should always at the same time should. Scratch should. Consider and be invited to always at the same time. Look at me as another void. What is this me? I don't know. Who is it that doesn't know? That's one view. The other view is you're just mind-tripping yourself. You're making all these concepts and believing them. Something's making up. Don't you feel the emptiness, the ungraspability? Can't you tolerate the groundlessness of being? And celebrate it. It is your freedom. It is what you already are.

[42:45]

You're free. You're not caught in any of this. Well, I like that one, too, because maybe I still will always be around. With you, of course. I don't want to be alone. Well, most of the time, but not when I need you. LAUGHTER which is a lot of the time. We need each other. We have limbic systems, I'm told. Another definition. All right. There will be question and answer later for further confusion. Astounding, astounding confusion.

[43:24]

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