As penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with even in a hundred thousand million kalpas. having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tabata's words. Good morning.

[01:13]

I'd like to take as my starting point this morning a quotation, some words from Suzuki Roshi. This is a passage from Not Always So, one of the Dharma talks he gave. Ed Brown edited and put in that book. Not always so. It's a brief passage, but I think there's a lot to say about it. For those of you not familiar with Zen talk, The only thing that might be a mystery is that he, I'm quoting Suzuki Roshi and Suzuki Roshi is quoting or paraphrasing Dogen, Dogen Zenji.

[02:25]

So Dogen Zenji is the Zen teacher who founded the Zen school in Japan that Suzuki Roshi is the lineage descendant of. So the passage goes like this. Dogen Zenji talks about practice not as something special, but something continuous, something mixed up with everything. He says, He says, if you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. Does it make sense?

[03:26]

If you fall on the ground, you stand up by the ground in that place. Also, he says, if you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness, by nothing. without discussing why this is so, we cannot have a complete understanding of our teaching. Dogen Zenji talks about practice not as something special, but something continuous, something mixed up with everything. He says, if you fall on the ground, stand up, by the ground. Does it make sense? Suzuki Roshi was in the United States 12 or 13 years, but he was never so sure about his English, so he didn't know if what he was saying made sense.

[04:43]

His English is a lot better than most of our Japanese, but still he wasn't so sure about it, which was... So he spoke a certain kind of English, Suzuki Roshi English. And sometimes... Sometimes someone might ask a very long-winded philosophical question about the nature of emptiness and reality and existential this and so on. And then he might pause and he would say something. But it didn't seem as though what he said had anything whatsoever to do with a question that was being asked.

[05:47]

So you didn't know whether this was a profound teaching or whether he just didn't understand what the person was saying. Maybe sometimes one, sometimes the other. if you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. Does it make sense? If you fall on the ground, you stand up by the ground in that place. Also, he says, again, this is Zuzuki Roshi quoting, if you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness, by nothing. Without understanding why this is so, we cannot have a complete, without discussing why this is so, we cannot have a complete understanding of our teaching.

[06:56]

So to have a complete understanding of our teaching, we need to discuss why it is so, what it means. That if you fall on the ground, stand up. By the ground. And why it is so, the other part, the completing part, why it is so, if you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness. By nothing. These are the two parts. Stand up by the ground, stand up by emptiness. Or in technical language, stand up by the relative, stand up by the absolute. Stand up in the relative, stand up in the absolute.

[08:03]

Stand up in the conditioned, stand up in the unconditioned. Realize, practice in the conditioned, in the unconditioned. This is a complete understanding of our teaching, both sides. And right away, we get a flavor for Suzugiroshi's teaching and for the direction that he's going in when he says that Dogen says, that talks about practice, not as something special, but something continuous, something mixed up with everything. So practice is continuous with our life. Practice, practice realization, realization, enlightenment, all of those words are roughly synonymous.

[09:07]

They are continuous with our life. They're mixed up with everything in our life. They're not some special place to go to. They're mixed up with our sitting here right now. They're mixed up with our thoughts and our memories and our happinesses and our griefs and our feelings. Practice is mixed up with all of those things. The nature of the practice that Suzuki Roshi is recommending to us, encouraging us in. It's mixed up with that. So in that sense, this way is not transcendent. The definition of transcendent, according to my online dictionary, is to go beyond the limit.

[10:08]

To go beyond the limit. So our practice, our way, is one in which we don't attempt to go beyond the limit of this moment. Of this situation. We find our practice not by going beyond the limit. We don't go beyond the limit because the moment that we are in is already limitless, so it's not necessary to go somewhere else to find limitlessness outside of the moment that we're in, outside of the situation that we're in. However, do not misunderstand me. I don't mean... We should just sort of be in a bad situation or allow ourselves to be in a bad situation or allow others to be in a bad situation.

[11:24]

We may need to change. Here comes a joke. But it's change that we can believe in. We need change we can believe in. So the kind of change that we can believe in is a change where our practice is rooted, rooted in our life, in our mixed up with everything, rooted in our karmic life, whatever that is at this time. The sense in which we... Don't go beyond the limit is in the etymology of transcendent.

[12:29]

So transcendent is from trans, T-R-A-N-S, trans, skandere. Skandere means to climb, like scale, scaling. And trans means beyond or above. So transcendent is to climb above. That's the kind of thing that practice is not. Trying to climb above the moment, above the situation. On the contrary, our practice, our realization is founded in, finds its foundation in, is built in, is built on. is established in our life, in our karma, not only our karma, but in our delusion, surprisingly enough.

[13:33]

So in another work of Dogen's, he says, as some of you well know, he says, those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. Again, this is both sides. This is the Buddha side and the sentient being side. We're both of those. Those who have great realization of delusion, it's of delusion that we have great realization. Not climbing above. Not going somewhere else. Those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. Or to say it in a little less inflated way, we could say our Buddha moments are moments when we have realization of delusion.

[14:38]

Our sentient being moments are when we're greatly deluded about realization. What does he mean, greatly deluded about realization? I don't know, but maybe what he means is... But maybe what he means is when we think that realization is someplace else that we're going to get to. If we climb up the stepladder appropriately, then we get to the top of the stepladder, and then we look down, and we're really in a groovy place because we're at the top of the stepladder. That's the practice Suzuki Rishi is not recommending. A stepladder Zen, he called it. So the foundation of our practice is always now and always here, here the way unfolds.

[15:46]

So to a second point, to say the same thing in a slightly different way, comes from the, if you, Picture the metaphor, or anyway, that's the way it comes to me, is picturing the metaphor if you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. So you fall on the ground and you push up against the ground. If you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. It's very close. What you push up by is right there. So in this sense... our way, our practice, our method of spiritual development is immediately available. It's always immediately available. Again, in another work of Dogen's, he says, if you want to attain suchness, practice suchness without delay.

[17:01]

Suchness is a whole other story. It takes me a while to explain suchness. If you want to fully appreciate the complete quality of your life, the way that your life manifests, the way that our life manifests in the relative and absolute worlds, practice appreciating. the way our life manifests in the absolute and relative world right now. Ed Brown's translation is, if you want to attain just this, practice just this immediately. This is another way of saying that our practice is mixed up with everything. So you know that if you're a practitioner here, you know we're very devoted to zazen practice, to sitting with our legs crossed.

[18:09]

I love Katagiri Roshi's five-word zazen instruction. Sit down and shut up. We're devoted to sitting down and shutting up. And it is a wonderful practice to do. But it's not as though it's not as though that's near and something else is far. It's not a matter of far or near. We don't have to be sitting in the zendo wearing strange fancy clothes or any other kinds of clothes to push against the ground.

[19:16]

The ground is always there. The ground we need to push against is immediately there. Always there. It's no further away if you or I are upset or anxious or afraid or despondent. The full moon and the entire sky are reflected. in the ocean, even in a drop of water, even in a little puddle an inch wide in the mud, the full moon and the entire sky are there.

[20:22]

Even in a puddle an inch wide of your life, Oh, thank you. Practice is there. Not somewhere else. And the third aspect, so the list is, there is no place else to go.

[21:27]

Practice is immediately available. And now the third point is, falling. If you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. If you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness. Dogen and Suzuki Roshi are pointing toward falling. So we could say that our practice, our way, practice, practice realization is all mixed up. with our karma and whatever happens to be happening. But it seems like he's particularly emphasizing falling.

[22:28]

Falling, I take to mean falling is when we make a mistake, right? We don't want to fall down. We trip. Something trips us up. Something in life trips us up and we fall on the ground. How did that happen? We don't like it. We don't want to be there. It's an error. And I would say that Buddhism, Buddhist teaching, this kind of teaching, has a particular applicability to this area of falling, to this area of What happens that we don't want to happen? Or, vice versa, what doesn't happen that we do want to happen? So in the mythic story of Shakyamuni Buddha, as...

[23:37]

man whose name I've forgotten who wrote Stephen Batchelor. As Stephen Batchelor points out the story of Shakyamuni Buddha as all great deep mythic stories is our story. The story of Shakyamuni Buddha's life is the story of our, of your, my, our spiritual life, spiritual growth, spiritual development. And in that story, at the beginning, he is shielded from falling. He never gets to see anyone fall down. But then, he goes with his chariot Chanda. One night he goes to the city and he sees a sick person.

[24:49]

Maybe you all know this story. And the next night he sees an old person. And the third night he sees a funeral procession. Old age, sickness, and death. And this and then the fourth night he... cuts his hair off and leaves the protected place, the palace. This shocking evidence of dukkha, of the first noble truth. The first noble truth is dukkha in Sanskrit. In English we often say suffering, but suffering is not quite suitable maybe. In one word it would be unsatisfactoriness.

[25:58]

And dukkha means things don't work out the way we want them to. That's what it means. How come? old age, sickness, and death are universally what we don't want to happen. Universally, however, they will occur. One of them will definitely, universally, absolutely, no questions about it, occur. We may be able to skip one of the other two or both of the other two. But this is not what we planned. It's not how we thought things should be. They're the vanguard of dukkha. As it turns out, they are not the only things that don't work out the way we would like them to.

[27:12]

there is usually some number of additional items. Usually many, many, many items that don't work out the way we would like them to, or vice versa, you know, something happens we didn't want it to happen. They try to categorize some of the main categories of this in the ancient texts, like being with people who you... Being with people you love and like and being with things that you love and like is what you want. And then sometimes you find that you're separated from those people and things that you really would like to be with. I used to go to visit my folks, my parents, who lived in... let's see, they lived in Palm Springs.

[28:17]

Most recently, they had lived in Leisure World in Southern California, living the life of leisure in Leisure World. And before that, they had lived in Palm Springs. And when I get to Palm Springs, there they'd be. And they were really happy to see me. God knows why. But that's the way it is. Sometimes. Sometimes people are really happy to see you. And then my father died.

[29:23]

My mother's still alive. She's 90. She is, today is what day? December 20th? She's going to be 93 the day after tomorrow. She can't keep track of how old she is. 93? Really? Really? Yeah, Mom, 93. I'm 61 or so. And she calls me in Yiddish, she calls me an altacaca. That means an old fart. You're 61? Yeah, Mom, I'm 61. What an altacaca you are. My father's not around. He died in 2004. And I think of him.

[30:30]

Anyway. So they divided it up in lots of different ways. But in many ways that things don't happen that we want to happen. And things that happen that we don't want to happen. This is called Maduka. Maduka, as understood through, if you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground, means stay close to your suffering. Maduka, as understood through, if you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground, means stay close to your suffering. If you feel pain, stand up by pain.

[31:43]

If you feel anxiety, stand up by anxiety. Don't go away. So this is a unique, I think unique, pretty unique aspect of Buddhist teaching is that we move toward We move toward our dysphoric, discord states. Dysphoric is the opposite of euphoric. Euphoric, dysphoric. We move toward our dysphoric states. That's the ground that we push up against. And this is contrary, you know, as you all know, this is very, very, very contrary to what our culture is endlessly telling us, which is, don't look at that.

[32:59]

Get away. No. You'll never die. Just put this cream on. Trying to sell us creams that will never die. Forget about it. You know. Tuck. Nip. What is that? You know, if you get tucked in, you know, then you will be forever young. You won't get old age and sickness and death. What a load of bullshit that is, huh? That's our culture for you. Or if you buy a certain car, forget that. So that's our culture. But also, you know, this is very contrary to evolution. Because, let's see, pain and anxiety usually indicate danger. Like if you're sitting around in the cave with the other cavemen and cavewomen.

[34:04]

You put your hand in the fire, it's like, ouch. That's good that you feel pain. Because then you'll take your hand away. None of this funny thing. If the saber-toothed tiger is outside the cave door, you should be anxious. This is a good thing to be anxious, you know, because then you'll run away and hide. And in fact, the people who weren't anxious about the saber-toothed tiger outside the cave, they're not the people whose gene pool we are the inheritors of. They didn't make it. Oh, what do I care? I'm a saber-toothed tiger. Who cares, you know? Those are the people, we're not descendants of those folks. We're descendants of the ones who say, oh no, Secretary Tyler, gotta get out of here. So anyway, oh, so pain and anxiety were, from an evolutionary point of view,

[35:16]

We think we're supposed to move away from them. And that works really well about fire and saber-toothed tigers. But it doesn't work so well. It's not so helpful with other kinds of discordant, dysphoric states that we encounter in our life. It's better, actually, if we go toward those. What's that word that starts with a T? That means patience. Thank you. If we tolerate our pain and our anxiety, that's kind of a quality of practice, is tolerating it. That doesn't sound so great, you know, tolerating it. I could try to spruce it up, patience, calm, abiding, but basically it's tolerating it. our dysphoria.

[36:18]

That gives us an opportunity to know something about it. If we move away from it, we can't know anything about it. We can't find out about it. So that's all If you fall on the ground, stand up by the ground. Then there's also, if you fall on the ground, stand up by emptiness. So I wanted to explain what that means. Emptiness. Emptiness, so... It's actually very straightforward. It's not some mystical transcendent concept, emptiness. It's pretty straightforward once you get the... the hang of it, as it were. So in Sanskrit, emptiness is shunyata.

[37:23]

That's the word that emptiness translates. And the technical term is svabhava shunya. Sva is on, bhava being, shunya is shunyata, empty. On, being, empty. Emptiness means that things are empty of their own being. So here's, you've probably heard this example before, but here's this example. So here's this stick, right? And a lot of other stuff. Here's this stick, and this is a stick. But, obviously, this stick... came from a tree. No tree, no stick, right? And this stick was carved by Mel Weitzman and given to me.

[38:27]

So no tree, no Mel Weitzman, no stick. And obviously there would be no Mel Weitzman, no Mel Weitzman, if there was no Mel Weitzman's mom. So Mel Weitzman's mom, Mel Weitzman, tree, stick. You get the gist of this, and I could keep going on and [...] on. Infinitely. Infinitely. There are an infinite number of reasons why this thing is this thing that we call stick. That is what this is. This is the current manifestation of infinite causality. That's the vertical dimension.

[39:31]

The horizontal dimension is its relationship to all of us. So if I cut this up into a thousand pieces and made it into toothpicks, it wouldn't be this stick anymore. It would still be the same stuff, right? But its relationship would be different. If you weren't here, it wouldn't be the stick to you now. So all of us, all everything, everyone, all the atoms in the air, conspire to... manifest stick right now right here that's this then we call it a stick but the stick is the one thing that it's not the stick is just the name of all of that stuff vertical and horizontal dimensions that cause it to be what it is but of course it's not just it's not just stick it's everything it's everything it's everything right

[40:40]

It's everything. Look around. It's all that way. The shutters, the sun, you, me, you know, bow ties, everything is all just the current manifestation of our thoughts, you know, our feelings. They're just the current, you know, like a wave cresting. They're the crest of the wave of causality. That's why it's called conditioned co-production. It's co-produced in the conditioned world. That's what emptiness refers to. It's just saying that when you say stick, what you really mean is just this particular coagulation of infinite causes. When you call it a stick, It's called relative reality.

[41:40]

It's called the relative. It's called the condition. When you talk about the whole thing, it's called emptiness. Or the absolute. This is a relative emanation of the absolute. This is the absolute right here. And the relative. That's why in the Heart Sutra, they say no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no this, no that, no the other thing, right? The no means that refers to, don't be mistaken, there are eye, ears, nose, body, mind, there's all of those things, but all they are is infinite causation as manifested at this moment in this way. Or in the Diamond Sutra it says, you know, they're endlessly saying in the Diamond Sutra things like, as no person should person be understood.

[42:51]

Which sounds really, it sounds very strange. But that's what they're referring to. The no person part is referring to the infinite causality aspect of things. That's how a person should be understood. That's the absolute understanding. Of the person. So... You kind of get the feeling for that? Somewhat? Emptiness? Are we cool on emptiness? So... That's a big long explanation. It's not so long, but anyway, that's an explanation. But what emptiness means, mixed up with everything, standing up by emptiness, mixed up with everything, is to have an open, expansive,

[44:10]

Mind. Flexible mind. Let me try that again. So we need to know this is a stick. It's important that we know that this is a stick. It's important that we respect its relative reality. What happens is if you don't respect the relative reality of things, is that you're reborn as a fox 500 times. So it's important to respect the relative reality of things. But, let's see if I can keep track of this here. But we recognize that this just happens to be the way it happens to be.

[45:15]

You just happen to be the way you happen to be, and I just happen to be the way I happen to be. This just happens to be the current manifestation of infinite causation. But it's not like it's got to be that way. It's not like it's going to be that way in a minute. It's going to be different, because there'll be another minute. added in to everything, you know. Sometimes this can be very dramatic. For example, if there was a nuclear explosion in the city, in a minute, things would be just vastly different. And it would really be obvious. So sometimes it's more obvious, sometimes less obvious, but it's always that way. So to stand up by emptiness means to recognize That things are the way they are and it's really important to take care of them the way they are. That's the stand up by the ground part. And they just happen to be that way. It's a very open system.

[46:19]

It's very flexible. Things can be different. Things can change. I can change my mind. I don't have to be stuck in the way that I think about things and in the way that I feel about things. So to stand up by emptiness means that possibility is open to us. It reduces the stuck, coerced, compelled, locked in, solidified way that we think things are. and that we feel about things. So I had a brief example from the field of psychology, from the field of psychotherapy, which is... Freud said, this is a paraphrase, Freud said...

[47:34]

The purpose of psychoanalysis, which was the psychotherapy of his time, the purpose of psychoanalysis is for the doctor, he was always talking about the doctor, the doctor to remove the distortion from the patient. It's a very medical kind of orientation. To remove the distortion from the patient, thus freeing the patient from to experience ordinary human unhappiness. That's a wonderful, wonderful thing. So psychotherapy and Buddhist practice are different things, but there are certain areas of resonance. So this is an area of resonance. When he's saying remove the distortion from the patient, to allow them to experience ordinary human unhappiness, when he's saying that distortion is like a stuck idea that is like in Buddhist practice when we talk about having a stuck idea, which is having a stuck idea.

[48:52]

If we're too stuck on some idea, it's an insufficient appreciation of emptiness. Emptiness allows us to get unstuck. is the basis for an unsticking direction to move in. So an example from psychotherapy is that, you know, someone, when they're growing up, when they're doing something, moving to a new stage of life, for one reason or another, Someone who they care a great deal about maybe has some big problem, like they're about to go to college or something like that, and the person's mother gets very sick. They're about to get married, and the person's father dies. Something like that.

[49:54]

So then, fast forward 20 or 30 years, And the person walks into the psychotherapist's office and they're wondering why they haven't been able to get their life together. Why they haven't developed a career. Why they haven't had an ongoing relationship that has really worked. And, you know, this is not, I'm not trying to explain everyone's problems. This is just an example, you know. So then it turns out that if you kind of work with this in some way, you find out that there's a kind of belief that the person has been living with, very well-founded belief based on their experience. If I move forward in my life, someone who I care a great deal about is going to get really hurt, which of course creates a tremendously conflicted feeling because you don't want to hurt your mom or your dad, but it seems like every time I do something good for myself,

[50:58]

somebody else gets really in trouble. So that's a kind of stuck belief. Because when I say it this way, obviously that's not true. Obviously it's not so that if the person moves forward, somebody else is going to have a problem. Or, anyway, it's a little more complicated than that, but... So that kind of stuckness is what the understanding of emptiness allows us to have. So to stand up by the ground when you fall on the ground, And to stand up by emptiness when you fall on the ground means that while staying close to our own life and our own suffering and our own karma, we are encouraged, inspired to open it up.

[52:19]

Excuse me. And this is called freedom. Free ourselves. So I'd like to close with just one or two further thoughts. So the method, how this is done, the method that I would propose in practice, the method of our practice is relentless encouragement. That's the essential method of Zen practice. relentlessly encourage in this direction, in this direction of, it's okay, you can stay there, you can be there, you can be there, I can be there, I can stay with my life. And I can work toward loosening up places where it's clenched up, where the muscle is clenched.

[53:31]

Where the muscle is clenched, the emotional muscle is clenched. I have a muscle down here right now that's clenching. And I'll see what happens to it. But if I can release it, then I'm standing up by emptiness. And our emotional muscle too. And our thinking muscle. If we can massage. It's another phrase of Katagiri's. Zazen is like massaging the mind. And you may notice that my prescription of relentless encouragement is rather vague and unspecific and undetailed. And there are a lot of details that one can enter into. But...

[54:34]

the spirit of them, I would offer, is one of encouragement. Encouraging us not to leave our life, but to stay seated like a Buddha in our life. I made up a word to the reason why relentless encouragement works. Do you know that word tropism? tropism like tropism is a tendency toward so like plants are heliotropic they grow toward the helio toward the light heliotropic so the reason why relentless encouragement works is because we are prajna tropic We are sophiotropic.

[55:38]

We have a natural inclination. This is, Suzuki Rishi said, wisdom, seeking wisdom. We have a natural inclination toward this, toward open, freeing ourselves. So the fundamental practice is one of encouraging that natural inclination. Okay, thank you.

[56:23]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_91.52