The brave ones who decided to come back. You're crazy. You know, your very self is at stake here. Is there anyone who doesn't have the handouts? Okay, let me just... Oh, there's two. So here's two, and it's the same one. And so if the other extras can come back. Oh, well, you get it. So remember last week we heard that Dogen Zenji said, to study the way is to study the self.

[01:20]

To study the self is to forget the self, and so on. And in this same piece of Dogen, he says, as you probably might have heard, There's this term that Dogen uses a lot called Shusho. Shusho is one of Dogen's trademark phrases, and literally means Shusho is like practice, and Shusho, we sometimes say enlightenment, so we say like practice dash enlightenment, or practice realization. He makes them into a compound, so they're non-dual practice and realization. is literally like verification or confirmation. So you say there's the practice and then there's the practice and then the confirmation, maybe in parentheses, of enlightenment are non-dual.

[02:28]

So but through the practice or in the very moment of practice is the verification of like a personal verification of awakening. So Dogen uses this term shusho, and this is kind of slightly tangential, but in the Genjo Koan where Dogen says to carry the Self forward and experience myriad things, this delusion, this word experience is the translation of this term shusho. So literally we could say, to carry the self forward and practice and verify the myriad things is delusion. You follow? This is a kind of a literal translation of this sentence. To carry the self, in this case we could say this view of

[03:35]

me as an inherently existent self, to carry this self forward and practice, to carry me forward and me doing the practice, and then me verify or confirm the myriad things, kind of like, yeah, that's that, and this is the table, and that's the floor, and verify these things as things. This is delusion, to carry this self forward and practice and Verify the myriad things is delusion. That myriad things come forth and practice and verify the self is awakening. So there's kind of these two reversal sentences of Dogen. Excuse me. Yeah. Could you say something? What is this term to practice? Practice, yeah... I think just what we kind of think of as practice, any kind of, let's just say for now, meditation practice.

[04:48]

How about meditation practice? Like zazen. Let's say zazen for now. So to carry the self forward and do zazen, have the Self do Zazen and then verify the myriad things, the way the myriad things are through Zazen. This is delusion. The Self is doing this. But the myriad things coming forth and doing Zazen. Yeah, yeah. And doing Zazen and verifying the Self is awakening. That's a new idea. Oh, good. Yeah, well, Dogen says this quite a bit, rocks, tiles, pebbles, all are practicing together, yeah, and so on. I think we are chanting that they are experiencing themselves. Yes, exactly. This is interesting, you know, this is Japanese language, so we can translate it in these ways.

[05:53]

So yeah, we say to experience themselves. Literally, the character is just self, so you could read it as... themselves or the Self. And in a way, I think it kind of makes more sense maybe to say the Self, because then these two sentences are just opposites of each other. To carry the Self forward, and if you read it in Japanese, it's like they're just reversed. Self, carry Self forward, Shusho, the myriad things, and the myriad things, Shusho, the Self, you know, these, like this. Um... So you might see how this is directly related to this topic. You could say this is of these types of self on the list here, the dependably co-arisen self. It could be said to be like this seeing how the myriad things are coming forth and practicing and confirming the true nature of the self.

[06:59]

And this is maybe not how we usually approach practice. We usually think, now I'm going to practice, and so on. And then right after these sentences, Dogen goes on to say, those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas. Those who have great realization... Those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings. So again, these two kind of reverse sentences. And kind of like, maybe not what we would usually think at first anyway. Those who have great realization of delusion or about delusion are Buddhas. So in terms of this topic, we could say those who deeply understand this... deluded view of the inherently existent self, deeply see how that works, understand that, have realization of this delusion, are free of the delusion in our Buddhas by understanding it.

[08:08]

So like last week we were talking about bringing up this deluded view in order to clearly see and go beyond. Whereas maybe at first we might think that those who... Well, maybe don't think this, but those who have great delusion about Realization, but this would be like kind of any idea, carrying the Self forward and having any idea about what Realization is, those are sentient beings as opposed to Buddhas. They don't realize that they're greatly deluded about what Realization is, but... Can you follow? So I think this, again, is Dogen's encouragement to study delusion, study the self, study delusion, a great realization of delusion, and become Buddhas, verify Buddhahood. Yeah. Those who have any idea about what realization is by sentient beings, and so is it better than thinking, oh,

[09:21]

It's not so good to be a sentient being. It feels like, to me, that's getting implied there. Well, I think it is sort of implied that Buddha is kind of comparing Buddhas and sentient beings. But we also say maybe a deeper layer of Dogen's teaching is that sentient beings and Buddhas are non-duo, are not two. It's another important teaching of Dogen. But in this phrase, you could say he's... This paragraph, he's bringing out this, we could say, conventional difference between Buddhas and sentient beings to make a point. And even in bringing out the difference, we don't need to get into better or worse, in terms of just better or worse. We could just say, well, Buddhas are free to... of being a sentient being and free to completely be a sentient being.

[10:23]

And sentient beings are those who are stuck in sentient beings in such a way that they don't realize that they are Buddha. Maybe that saves this paragraph. or did you think he just spoke about delusion, right? So he seemed to speak about realization and talk to people about that. Both, but I think if you look at the sutras and you add up the times that he talks about delusion, like I'm just thinking of, say, for example, the classic Pali canon, the early teachings, look at the times he's talking about delusion and the times he's talking about realization, just offhand from looking at the sutras, say maybe it's kind of like more like 80% talking about delusion. For example, nirvana, as the kind of goal in a way, there's very few statements describing what nirvana is, so few that there's these classic couple sutras that are always quoted, whereas many, many sutras on all of the hindrances and delusions and afflictions and so on, a lot actually about that.

[11:38]

But he did talk about both, but I think in a way you could say he's bringing up the deluded part because that's... Not just to get into delusion, but because delusion is the very place where enlightenment happens. There's no other place. So that's where in this study, for example, this point about this belief in the inherently existing self, that's the very place where we become free from this belief. It's not like some other place. It's like we have this belief over here and we can maybe just... push this away, aside, and kind of like, here's the enlightenment over here. That's the very place we have to look to set us free. We might have some sense of this, or maybe not. But it seems very undeniable that the place that we're holding on and we're stuck is the place we're going to become unstuck. some other unstuckness.

[12:41]

And in fact, we can get unstuck in other ways, but if there's this core stuckness, that's really this place where we have to look. And I can't remember if I mentioned last week explicitly this point that this belief in the inherently existing self that exists independently... by way of its own character, this belief, this little thing that the mind does, this little view, is the very root of all suffering, stress, anxiety, separation, alienation, discomfort, anxiety, worry, fear, we could go on, right? It's the root of all of that, of samsara, samsara being the the kind of driven cycle of suffering, that we're being pulled along through our habitual patterns into more of the same, that this view is the very root of all of this mess.

[14:04]

And you could even say any problem that you could ever imagine I think we could even say this, it's the root of every problem in the world. And so this is, again, this encouragement for this study of the Self, because if we really come to see that, what could be more valuable than actually examining and possibly becoming free of the very root of every possible form of suffering? The view of the inherently existent self, existing by way of its own character, independent of body and mind and other selves in the world, and so on. Is it innate? And it's innate, and it's innate. This innate view, and because it's innate, that's why virtually all beings sometimes, at least, have at least some

[15:09]

suffering. I think this point can't actually be emphasized enough, and maybe we should stop before going on, just to see, do people actually believe this idea? It's a big statement, but really, look at it. We might think, well, I know that's one of the main causes of a lot of suffering, or some suffering, or maybe most, but does it really all come down to that? Like, what about plagues or something? Are they based on this root? But we have to define what's the suffering involved in plagues. So any type of suffering. So this is just maybe for just a minute or so. Is there anybody who thinks they might disagree with this?

[16:15]

And if you think you might, please actually try to see what we can come up with that might be otherwise. Do they disagree with exactly what? Just that this fact, that this view is actually the root... condition of all, of any possible type of suffering, distress, all this. Maybe not, yeah, because I'm kind of like sort of promoting this idea, right? So you might well not, but yeah. even if somebody was to become fully enlightened and ease their own suffering, would they not still suffer because of the suffering of all other beings who have not become enlightened yet? So even this sort of, I don't know, but maybe there'd still be suffering left until all beings are free, which is sort of this impossible task. Good question. Yeah, yeah, good question.

[17:16]

Good point. Or are they going to be free of that suffering as well while still wanting to leave? Yeah. Yeah, there's some debate about this point, I think, and I think different ways of talking about it. For those who were at the Sunday talk, this Sunday, it was, I think it was, was it the Sunday talk? There was kind of this point that the greatest suffering is, I mean, the greatest happiness is actually the suffering of... compassion, this suffering with other beings. So that could sound like actually that's a type of suffering that could be... A different kind. Different kind, yeah. And that's the thing. I think we could say it's a different kind, and part of the hint that it's a different kind is it's the suffering that's the greatest happiness. So we're already like, hmm, this is a different kind of suffering.

[18:17]

Because of love. Yeah, right. And even to say exactly what it is, whether, you know, in that talk it was called suffering, but hard to say. Maybe it's just like this feeling of just total connectedness that's slightly different. So it depends how we define the term. But I think we could say the suffering that's really not happy at all. How about that one? What's your name? Jasmine. Jasmine. So I'm a little bit confused. I follow you when you say that the place where we are stuck is the place where understanding will occur. I can follow that, and I can follow the Sunday lecture. That's the greatest happiness is the suffering that comes from love and compassion. But how would you characterize the kind of suffering that comes from sadness or sorrow about...

[19:19]

about climate change or about seeing the Earth mapped over the highways or about mass extinctions of other species. Certainly there's a lot of suffering of sentient beings all over because of human impact on Earth. I guess it's hard for me to understand how changing my understanding could either be the greatest happiness or could be something that I could liberate myself from. I don't know if this is a topic. I think it's... I would say it's the same, actually, the same point. It depends when we look at the environmental problems and stuff. Either we could see it as... It could be these two kinds. Now we've sort of come up with these two kinds of suffering. Either it could be that we're suffering because of the compassion of the actually individual living beings who are being harmed by... by environmental change and so on. Yeah, I mean, if we feel like the Earth is suffering in some way as a planet, but I think mostly it means, I think actually it's sentient beings with, you know, minds really that suffer.

[20:40]

Animals? What's that? Animals? Animals, yeah. Maybe, again, there's some debate about plants, but it seems like technically plants are not sentient beings. Because they don't have five skandhas. Do you remember that according to Buddha's definition of suffering, it kind of needs to be these five skandhas. But some people might say, well, there's some kind of subtle consciousness in a plant. This would be a discussion we could have. It seems... The suffering comes from watching the destruction, even though the plants, so-called, maybe they don't suffer, they die. We could suffer. Yeah. Well, the plant and then the animals don't have anything to eat, so... Yeah. I think we can definitely... There does seem to be this difference between plants and animals. Like, we can tell... Because animals have these five skandhas, they... Because they have them, they grasp them as a self, and therefore they suffer.

[21:45]

Plants, I think we could say that they're more like advanced in the way that they, I don't think they grasp in the way the animals do. And if there's no grasping in a sense, I think you could, my understanding is that there's not actually suffering in the same way. I think we kind of project in a way onto plants sometimes some kind of anthropomorphizing or something. But we take care of plants. And we take care of rocks, too. But if they do Zazan, they can't suffer. Well, they are advanced. That's what Zazan is, actually, not suffering. Yeah, right, right. The secret life of plants and all this, yeah. So we could debate this point, but I think let's not go too far into this. But anyway, as far as this environmental thing of like there's... It could be this compassion for the beings of the earth suffering, and I think if it was really about all these beings, then we could feel that happy suffering, actually, of just feeling like, I want everyone to be free and happy.

[23:00]

Now, if it's kind of our own concern, I think we could also say this about... Maybe people that we love who are dying, maybe? We could say, again, we can look and see which one of these two is it. If it's the one that's, is it really like the loss to the world of this person and the loss of this person to this person, or is it me and my attachment? I am going to lose that person. In which case, those are the two different kinds. And that first one, I think, is not so happy. I mean, the second one... The one that's like, because I'm going to lose them, that suffering, I don't think there's that same kind of happiness in it. This is how we can distinguish, I think, between is this just true compassion for the person or is it like my loss? And we can tell because one's kind of wonderfully happy and one's actually not.

[24:03]

So this is a good point. We've discovered there's two kinds of suffering. So of the kind that's not happy, can we come up with any examples that would not depend on this view? The view of the inherently existent self. Just to be clear, pain isn't suffering. Right. I think we should distinguish this point, too. Like, for example... like break a leg or something, or excruciating physical pain. It's possible to have great pain, but just for the sake of this discussion, let's distinguish it without making a problem out of it. Just like, this is actually, all the conditions came together, this leg broke, there's this sensation, of course there is, because that's how this works. And just kind of observing, theoretically, there could be such a thing, of just like, that's exactly what's happening, perfectly according to conditions, and it's not like the pain is stopping, but like, I actually don't have a problem with it.

[25:16]

You know, the Buddha, actually, there's this one kind of extreme sutra in the early sutras, the Buddha, it's like the simile of the Saw Sutra, maybe people will know, the Buddha's like, you know, if you're being like sawed, your body's being sawed in some myriad pieces with a saw, and I can't remember exactly how it goes, but, like, if you... I think it's kind of about this view, as I recall. If you don't have this view, it's actually, like, okay if you radically don't have it. Yeah. To kind of offer a definition of suffering, I would say suffering is rejecting whatever is going on in the moment. In other words, there's some no that arises in anything that's taking place. And that requires a self and judgment. That's okay, not okay. Yeah, it involves a judgment. And the judgment needs a separate self. And the judgment needs a self.

[26:27]

If we say it like, yeah, and actually that's how the Buddha did define suffering. The Buddha said suffering, he said basically, in his very first sutra, as we said last week, He defined all this, you know, not getting what we want, suffering, getting what we don't want, suffering, and in the end, basically, the five grasping aggregates, or grasping the five aggregates, is suffering. That includes all the others. And for a shorthand, we could say it's grasping the five skandhas as a self, or we could say it translated as the self, grasping the five skandhas, is basically all those other kinds. He is basically what? He is basically suffering. That's the definition. Yeah, that's what I'm kind of proposing, except for this exception we discovered of this compassionate, happy suffering.

[27:31]

Earlier you asked if there was any disagreement. What came up for me was not disagreement, but the more firmly this definition is described, I get pointed toward a kind of opposition, which is in a world in which suffering is so all-pervasive, this argument seems to prove the reality of selves, as opposed to freedom from that idea being a liberation from suffering. In other words, I feel the whole thing sort of reifying the more we talk about. reifying, that there really, is it inherently exist itself? Suffering is so real and all pervasive in the world around us. Yes, so you're saying that maybe there really is a self.

[28:38]

There must really be a self. I'm not exactly going forward, I'm just knowing that this thought can be on. Good point too, I think. And so if we keep going down this road of this conclusion, then... And I think the reason why I'm emphasizing this so much and really thinking about this and maybe after class continue to think about this point is because we don't usually think this way because I think of this point. There's so much suffering in the world. It can't all come down to this one point. So I think to really become convinced that actually this is the root of all of that and it's so pervasive and every single being has it, how radical that is to see that wow, this view, this little view, this little thing that the mind does, this little projection and reification, is it that widespread, completely causing world wars? And you could say, well, actually, yeah. That's why. I think that is the point.

[29:40]

In the realm of the self, there is suffering. In no self, there is no suffering. And causing suffering? as well. The self causes suffering. The belief, the view. When the self arises, suffering arises. They rise together, so that's why it's complete in that way. It's completely reified. The self completely reifies the suffering. If the self doesn't arise, the suffering doesn't arise. Right, I understand that. What I'm saying is that it looks like it goes the other way too. The suffering If the suffering gets reified, it seems to reify the idea of the suffering. Well, they do dependently co-arise. Exactly. And when you look around the world and see so much suffering, and it's so linked to self, then it seems to verify itself. Everything is confirming this false belief. I mean, society is based on this. That's why I say, like, you're amazingly...

[30:43]

courageous to actually start looking at this thing. And also you could say, well, virtually nobody is actually seeing through this belief in the world. What's that about? If people knew that this is the root, then why don't we just give it up? It seems so simple. But actually it's not easy. This process takes effort Basically, clarification and understanding is the main effort, and many other factors, like concentration and so on. I have to say the way I understand Catherine's expression, or I understand your expression, Catherine, is that personally I feel convinced of this proposition, actually. that this is certainly not the end of the subject.

[31:48]

Exactly. But even though you understand what you mean? Intellectually? Intellectually, I think I understand. Because we still haven't gotten into how this view works. This would be the very first step. Even in this meditation of five steps, this is before step one. This has just come into the conclusion that... this is what we have to look at, that this really is the direction we have to look before we even get into understanding how this could be so. It's even before understanding that the self doesn't inherently exist. We might even say, well, the self does inherently exist, and that's the reason why there's suffering. That would still be okay in terms of this present discussion. Just looking at that point, Yeah, sorry.

[32:51]

I disagree. Oh, you mean... Intellectually? You say, but we're still suffering, or we're not suffering? I disagree. I think we totally believe it. Of course, I've not been here long enough, but all of the discussions I have heard in two diversity trainings, suffering around the issue of diversity, difference. To put it playfully, why do we have these trainings? Why do we have these trainings? Why don't we simply do traditional Buddhist practice and expose the deeply held belief in a separately existing self as the root cause of all suffering around the issue of difference.

[33:54]

One question. Good question. Why, in the two trainings I attended, this central teaching of Buddhism, maybe I wasn't present, but never appeared? All kinds of reasons, noble reasons in my eyes, in terms of conventional experience, talking about suffering arising from our human experience of difference, are being talked about within the Zen-Center training situation. For me, the idea of this teaching that you bring up here, Central Elias, Central Teaching of Mahayana Buddhism, is not being talked about. It's in my memory of it. So that's, again, when you discuss something, that is a situation where I feel within Zen center, you do not believe that this is true.

[34:59]

Okay, yeah, yeah. Okay, I agree with that. I see what you're saying. Yeah, we don't believe that it's true that this, of this point, that the self is the root, that this view. Yeah, I think we think, yeah, we think there's other approaches that, maybe we think that it's one of the myriad things, and we're going to work on all of them, and it's just one, and maybe we even forget that one, because it's kind of tricky, and it's like, it's a little bit difficult to look at this one, because the other ones kind of help kind of confirm and reify the self a little bit. So we feel more comfortable. Yes. This is a kind of, to really get into this topic, is quite uncomfortable. Actually. Courageous ones. Yeah. So, good, yeah. I just wanted to say, there is an exception to the example which was a couple of discussions that were led by Bradett Pasahara and Paul, where he brought the Dharma to the diversity discussion.

[36:05]

It was quite exceptional and quite different from any diversity discussion in that sense. Yeah, it was interesting. I was doing some random reading from other books and other approaches, and I read that quote, which I sent to you, actually, which is, without complete understanding of the nature of the two truths, you cannot become fully generated. And the two truths are the conventional truth, which is suffering we should never tell doctors not to cure people, and the other truth is the self that... So I think we want to eliminate pain in the world as much as we can for others. But for ourselves, we need to reduce our suffering. And I don't know if we could be responsible for the suffering of other people, but we can actually reduce the pain for other people. So I think that's hard. And it's also easier to deal with pain than suffering. And so some people here and in other places, as I was saying, this is too scary.

[37:08]

so let's just deal with people's pain rather than... And kind of more difficult, even in diversity trainings, I think. But don't you think the Bodhisattva Tao has to do with suffering and not pain? Yes, I agree with you. But also, I think this is a good point about the two truths, because on a conventional level, where Bodhisattvas are also, we have to be well-rounded, right? So we also look at how society... has prejudice and so on, and these more conventional things. But the important point is to not lose track of this really essential kind of core of Buddhadharma in this other work. And I think often we do, just naturally, we do lose track of it. Shohu? I guess it just comes to my mind that in order to really go and study this teaching, So what would be an example of relax, in terms of this discussion, relaxing with the suffering?

[38:26]

Oh, that would be like a conventional practice that wouldn't be directly... Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Helps people like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That's good, yeah. That's a good point too, yeah. And all kinds of other practices that we might do, Buddhist practices that aren't directly this one, could all aid this one. Like there's the Paramitas, six Paramitas, ending with wisdom. But you could say, first we practice generosity and ethics and patience and so on, even though they're they're not necessarily at this point, but they're all supporting this wisdom, and then the wisdom goes back and kind of like redefines the earlier practices. Louis? Not to take us even more in the scheduled meeting, but in, I don't remember what, but Dogen, like,

[39:31]

talks about how if we all already have Buddha nature, why should we go up and sit and... Practice. Practice. And I'm sure he answered that at one point. That forgot. I think he answered it with his classic phrase of Shusho. being not separate, practice and verification being not separate. So even though Buddha nature is pervading all of us, we have to verify it, we have to confirm it, and the confirmation of it is practice. What does that have to do with our discussion for now? Not really, it's a little bit of an offshoot, but an important point. Yeah, Nicola.

[40:33]

There's been a lot of things that I wanted to say, but I think what's most prevalent is something that you said, you said something like maybe looking at this is even more difficult than in the first year. And it is difficult to get into those discussions too, right? Yeah. In the sense of...

[41:35]

Like the diversity discussion is difficult because it's like we don't want to look at those issues. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So maybe, um, I guess I meant difficult. Well, yeah, we don't need to rank difficulty. There's no need. But they're both difficult. And I think any good practice is difficult. And they're both good practices. And they're challenging for all of us. And I think we value both types. Yeah. Yeah.

[42:40]

I don't know which is more. Yeah, thanks. And then something that I'm maybe simplifying this too much, but just to take a bit out of it and looking at this meditation on self and non-self. It keeps coming up with meditation and separation and non-separation. non-separation and so much compassion. Yeah, I think that works. Yeah, as we get into the subtleties of the view, we could see how it might be like subtly different when we're defining exactly the differences between these things, but I think generally we could say that, yeah, self is almost the same as separation, or the belief in the inherent existence of self is almost the same as belief in separation.

[43:50]

In some ways, yeah, self, and also if there's a self, it's a self in relation to others. As soon as there's a self, there's other. But you could also say this sense of separation, you could say, is actually in some ways maybe more subtle or another It's more like, for example, in the mind-only school, all Mahayana schools of Buddhism say there's selflessness of the person and selflessness of dharmas, all phenomena. And even though they're both selflessness or emptiness are synonyms, there are these two different aspects. And they kind of single out the person and say there's this kind of separate meditation can do that this class is based on this looking at the person, but the selflessness of all dharmas, that's the kind of classic Mahayana teaching like the Heart Sutra, is really even a deeper level, some would say, and particularly in the mind-only school, they'd say the selflessness of the person, it's just like we're talking about, it's the absence of an inherently existent person, but the selflessness of dharmas would be like

[45:11]

the non-duality of self and other, or subject and object. So, in a way, that's kind of like a further step. And they would say, first you meditate on the selflessness of the person, and then this other one about the non-duality. Yeah, and it's a kind of subtler selflessness, in a way, depending on how we talk about it, especially in that school. Yeah. Are there two... You were asking, is there any other source of this suffering? Yeah. It encouraged to me, and I wonder if this is the case, other people think. You can intellectually work it out, but when you look and see if you can find this innate self, when you start looking, then it's another level. You see some suffering there. And then if you were to ask the question, is there anything else as a cause to this, maybe it would be different.

[46:15]

Do you think? You mean after you started looking at what the sense of self is? If you had a sense of this innate sense of self, and you were asking that question, it's possible you couldn't reason it out so well. How so? I suppose that's when you were... when you, you know, in your handouts, it suggests that you look at the skandhas and ask, is it the same as... Oh, see, this is like, you'd be starting to do the meditation then. Yeah. And this might start to break down with the, you know, maybe you start to start questioning... You can't think about it in the same way. Once you start to, like, start to even doubt slightly the inherently existent self, maybe, like, it's... then you can start to doubt that suffering is even possible, maybe. And then when it's impossible to actually grasp any view of the inherently existing self, then suffering is truly impossible.

[47:25]

But this is more like before we start the meditation. But still, if suffering was possible, it would have to be based on this view. is the proposition. I see. But unless you knew what it was that you were talking about by experiencing it. Uh-huh. Experiencing it is a neat sense of self. Right. So that's going to be the next thing we're going to get into here is tuning into what this is and what it feels like. It might change something. It might change, yeah. So maybe that's going to be linked to this question so we can continue to examine whether we think this is true. But just to put it before we move to the next topic, just to put it in one slightly different way, about saying that this is the root of all suffering. I could also say, suffering, everything, arises dependent on conditions. It's not a classic Buddha teaching. So, conditions are just whatever is present, whatever the things, let's see, conditions are that which is present,

[48:34]

in order for something to be. When all these conditions are present, there's this. As the Buddha said, when this arises, this comes to be. Just that simple thing. It's not a causality. The conditions are the requirements for something to be. We can say one of the conditions, one of the many, many conditions for suffering is this belief, this view. So there's many other conditions too. So for example, and as soon as you eliminate any one condition, the phenomena disappears. That's the definition of what conditions are. You take away one of them and the thing no longer arises. So say for example... the suffering due to being sawed into pieces. One of the conditions is this belief for suffering, and another condition is being sawed.

[49:39]

So if you eliminate any one, and another condition is the fact that there's saws in the world. So you could eliminate any one of these conditions, and there's many more, and it would disappear. As soon as there's no saws in the world, there's no suffering in that particular situation. So all different forms of suffering have many different types of conditions, but this is the one condition that is the same in all, in all the kinds. So you could say, you know, doctors are working on, instead of working on this view, they're working on eliminating other conditions for suffering, like disease, you know. And that's good, and actually stops, it kind of ends in a sense, you could say, that particular type of suffering temporarily. But the beauty of this meditation is that this is one thing. If you eliminate this one condition, every form is eliminated. So like, wow, let's go for that one, right? You can just do this one thing and everything else is, you know.

[50:46]

So this might, again, sound like really radical and kind of messing around with words or something, but really look at that, you know. I think if we can see that, again, this is fuel for this practice. we can really see the value and benefit. If we really see, wow, this one thing that we actually don't even have to go to med school to learn, could actually eliminate all suffering. That's a joke. No, really. You don't have to go to med school to eliminate the suffering of disease in oneself. Now, if you could... The stuff doesn't exist. Yeah, or in one's own body and mind. Yeah, but if you eradicate it, then it's gone. The view? The suffering is there, but the disease is still there, too.

[51:49]

Yeah, that's okay. Saying, yeah, if you... Really? Could it be okay? Yeah. Remember the simile of the Saw Sutra? I'll try to find the number of the sutra and you can read it. That's about as extreme as it gets, right? You're being hacked into bits and like... Can you give me examples from my life? Sure. I had prostate cancer. Then with my Buddhist practice, when they told me I had cancer, and they didn't know how bad it was, I had some suffering. I meditated about an hour later. It went out of my mind. And I didn't think about it again until I had the operation. And it didn't freak me out at all. I was just living my normal life. So it does eliminate suffering. Were you practicing really intensely? And also, we have to be careful at this point that we can do certain kinds of meditation that just temporarily suppress the sense of self. This could be possible if we can just...

[52:52]

concentrate on something else, right? I wasn't concentrating. What I was doing, the sense of fear arose. I didn't try to push it away. I didn't evade it at all. I let it fully manifest itself. I just watched it. I've been doing awareness practice for a number of years, though. So then it faded, and I just went to this basic awareness state and stayed there, and it didn't arise again. I wasn't trying to suppress it. Never even arose again. And I wasn't afraid or anything. It was just a problem. Then after you found out it was OK, did you also not have any reaction? No, I had about another reaction. I meditated. It took about another hour or so. And then it also arose. I watched it and faded away. And I was just being aware. Wow, such a cure. Really interesting. Stuff works. That's a great point. You mentioned the medicine. It's interesting because Tibetan medicine, that's their belief, that the main cause of all your suffering and your winds being clogged is that belief itself.

[54:00]

But yet, of course, if you treat the various things, it's better, yeah, if you can uproot the whole thing. But there's various cures for more minor things, which, of course, are relevant to that. And this also is not saying that if this belief goes that your sickness is suddenly cured, it's just that you don't have a problem with your sickness anymore, is the point. But just related to this, similarly, one example just on this handout from the Buddha that I put this in because I thought it's a really nice practical example, that in this water snake simile sutra, you know, first... Actually, the first sentence is kind of the point that we've been talking about. I do not envision a clinging to a doctrine of self, clinging to which there would not arise sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. It's like you can't imagine any kind of belief like that where these things wouldn't arise. And then, you know, then he goes on with this example about this view that's an interesting view that...

[55:10]

You know, there's all these views of self, but this is one of them that sounds pretty good, right? That says, the view position, this cosmos is the self. The whole universe is the self. We hear these kinds of things in Zen sometimes, right? After death, this I, this cosmos, will be constant. It's because it's the universe, right? Constant, permanent, eternal, not subject to change. I will stay just like that for an eternity, because I'm the universe. And he says, isn't it utterly and completely a fool's teaching? Yes. Because it sounds pretty good, but it's kind of like if we're holding to the universe as a self, some idea of a self, it's a little bit off. It's pretty good, but it's a little bit off. But a lot of people had this view in India at that time. So speaking in this way, teaching in this way, I have been erroneously, vainly, falsely, unfactually misrepresented by some Brahmins and contemplatives. who say that I'm one who misleads, you know, that I declare annihilation, destruction, extermination of the being.

[56:17]

So people criticize him for this view. So he just makes that point. Does that relate to the universe situation? How does that connect mystics in that? If you identify with the universe, that's still a self, then something follows after that we get to the connection. I think it's running out of space. If we identify with that as a view of self, there's a problem. Then if others insult, abuse, taunt, bother, and harass the Tathagata for that, he feels no hatred, resentment, or dissatisfaction of heart because of that. And if others respect, honor, revere, and venerate the Tathagata for that, he feels no joy, happiness, or elation of heart because of that. Because if others honor, respect, and so on, he thinks, I think, they do me such service at this that has already been comprehended. So that's a kind of awkward sentence that the commentary says.

[57:20]

This is referring to the aggregate. So they do this service to me, this service of praise or abuse. They're actually praising or abusing the five skandhas, because there's not a self in addition to that. And he sees that they're just praising these dependently arising body and mind, it's not him they're praising, so therefore they can abuse the five skandhas and it's like, that's just what's happening. And they can praise them and it's not like me that they're praising or me that they're abusing. So that's kind of like this example. He's not bothered and then he kind of turns it on the people listening and Therefore, monks, if others insult, abuse, don't bother and harass you as well, you should feel no hatred, resentment, and so on. Or if they praise you, you don't need to feel elation because you can understand these skandhas. So I thought that's a really nice kind of daily life practice that you can take up as we deepen this.

[58:27]

Maybe it can deepen. We see more and more abuse without minding it. But I think also as a daily practice, before we realized it, this is a great way to see how much we're holding this view. If abuse comes and we feel this, it's a good way actually to identify this view. It's like, oh, that hurt. The one who's hurt there, and this is the next point we can get into, that's this sense of self. So now we're going to talk about identifying the sense of self. And so I thought one way is that Henry mentioned after class last week, I thought it was just a nice way to put it. This is one way to see this view, is that I think I'm the same person that got out of bed this morning. We actually think that. That I'm the one who woke up this morning, you know. Or I'm the one who, like... sat down in his chair earlier, or I'm the one who just said that previous sentence, not to mention I'm the one who, when I look in a photo of me when I was me, when I was 10 years old, that I'm that one.

[59:41]

We say, that's me in the photo. It's actually kind of weird that we say that, but we believe that this is the same self that's in that photo. And a baby photo, too. So basically it starts when we were born, but we don't remember the first little bit. As soon as we can start remembering, in a way that's kind of the view has been activated. It's innate, it's there even before we remember it, but it's activated. You could say it's like a program that's on your computer that's before you open it up. You know, it's on there already, but you have to kind of click on it and open the program that happens maybe like six months or something and it's kind of like then that one it seems like continues all the way up to this very moment that there's this something that's been the same throughout and this might be considered to be like a slightly coarse view of the inherently existing self or this we might call it permanent or continuous self through time

[60:48]

There's these different subtleties of the view, and this one is slightly more, maybe slightly more coarse, one could say, than what's called the inherently existent one, although they're very related. It's slightly different, yeah, and I think we don't want to, today, get into the difference, because it's very subtle. But they say you have to see the coarse one before the subtle anyway. It has more perception to it than the other one. Yeah, it has, we can see, this one we can see very easily, right? I think we can all see, like, the one that's in the ten-year-old picture really, really seems like it's me. It's like there's some independent... You know, we say, well, it's kind of dependent. It's affected me, it's been affected by things, but there's some sort of core essence that's actually not dependent on what happens to it. You know, it gets... It becomes happy and sad, and these things happen to it, but there's some aspect of me that actually isn't affected by anything, including my body changing from like this big to this big, right?

[62:02]

Like, it wasn't even affected by that. So, in a way, this is, you know, with these views that sometimes the self is different than the body and mind, and sometimes the same as... And it moves around because it's not really a thing, right? So it's kind of our view shifts a little bit. In this maybe slightly coarser view, we could say that the self there actually maybe is actually separate, slightly independent of the body, for example, because the body changed completely from when I was one year old to now, but the self continued. Before we go into these questions, because this might be the end of doing this, let me just briefly mention some other types of identifications or ways of talking about this sense of self. So hold this point, and it might help clarify this too. So there's this continuity, independent of conditions.

[63:07]

There's... We could also call the self to some words to evoke the sense. We call it the controller, the one that's kind of in relation to body and mind, constantly changing, the one that's sort of controlling the body and mind and controlling the world. We think that's in control. We feel like it's almost like omnipotent, right? Like it can't be harmed in a way. Even though body and mind can be harmed, there's some core that... until death, maybe. We even think, subconsciously, we know we're going to die, but this view, when we really tune into this view, it kind of thinks it's immortal. I think you can kind of get the sense that we don't really believe that I am going to die. We don't really look at this very much, but without looking at it, we kind of feel like we're going to last forever, generally, it seems. Maybe as we approach death, it's less so, but...

[64:12]

It seems like, so already, something's off there, right? The controller, the overseer, the commentator. I think this is, you know, this body and mind going, but then there's this sort of like, maybe again, a little bit separate from body and mind, this sort of commenting constantly on body and mind, and like, how it's doing, and like, what are you doing? How could I have done such a thing? Yeah, you stupid, we say to ourselves. Who's saying, that somebody's saying, Ongoing, commentator, yeah. It's independent, continuous, ongoing commentator. Sometimes it takes a little nap, but as soon as it wakes up, it kicks right back into action. Like the judge, the defender, defender of this body and mind, it's kind of the spokesperson, right, for this body and mind. The assessor, it's kind of like the judge, maybe, like the... So we're constantly assessing how this body and mind is doing in relation to others and so on.

[65:14]

You can get the sense, not at the assessing, but look at the assessor. To tune into this sense that there's somebody here in addition to this totally out of control body and mind that's just being created by everything. There's somebody watching the program. Trying to and trying to get a handle on it, right? This is suffering. This is called grasping the five skandhas of body and mind. That's what it is, right? The experiencer, we could say. There's the body and mind, but then there's this one who's experiencing in addition to that. Because we say, like, the agent of all activity. I don't remember if I mentioned last time, but I think it's an important point to also start questioning this view, because our language shows up the nonsense of this view, because sometimes we say, this is me, this is me, but sometimes we say, this is my body.

[66:26]

So there are two different views, and we say them both, and we feel them both. One is that this body is me. The body, for example, is me. Sometimes we say, this is my body. Or sometimes, you know, someone hit me. You hit me. And sometimes you say, you hit my body. But there's both the self. But there are two different views of the self, right? One is like the owner of the body. It's my body, my mind. There's a kind of possessor of the body and mind. And sometimes we think, It is the body and mind, and these views are delineated as we get into the reasonings. So already right there, that could be kind of scary, actually, to just look at this common sense thing that we do. Whoa, wait a second. There's two different views of who I am, and just common language shows it up. One is like, there's a view of, we own the body and mind, and they're very similar, right? So we don't even notice, maybe until we just think about that.

[67:29]

But they're like, already it shows like, We're trying to locate this thing, and its location is very slippery because we're actually not going to be able to locate it. But we're going to try. And this is actually the point of these meditations. We're going to try very methodically to locate this. First, we're going to get this sense going really strong so it seems like it's really, really here. And then while keeping the sense of it, we're going to try locating it in relation to the body and mind because that's basically... That has to do with what we are. And we're going to see that actually it's unlocatable either at the same as the body and mind or other than the body and mind. And all these views are slight variations on these two. There's only two possible views. And this is a point. And anything that inherently exists and you're comparing it to something else must be the same as or different

[68:31]

than the thing you're comparing it to. Anything. So, this recorder, if this recorder inherently existed, independently existed, it must be the same as the couch, or different than the couch. There's no third possibility. So this is something that you actually have to reason, you spend some time with this point. This is actually a crucial point, and it sounds kind of ridiculous, but it's an essential point in order to do this. You have to come to this conclusion But the recorder, if it were inherently existing, it would have to be identical to the couch or completely unrelated to the couch because it's not dependent on the couch. If it was not one of those two possibilities, if it was something kind of relational to the couch somehow, which actually it is, then it can't be inherently existent. can't exist independently.

[69:31]

Okay, so just before these last questions... Yeah, maybe, yeah. In a sense, you can't... Actually, there's really only two views, that the inherently existing self is the same as the body and mind, or different, and that's how Nagarjuna approaches it. He just says there's two views. Chandrakirti, for example, It's the same two views, but they can be broken into seven, five or seven. The Buddha taught four or five, and this might not make sense, but they all come down to the same two. So Nagarjuna is kind of the simple version. For example, oh, those ones. Yeah, those are all the same two views, too. The controller, for example, seems slightly separate than the body and mind, independent of the body and mind. But they say actually that the innate view that we're born with is the view that the independent self is fused, mixed with body and mind like milk and water.

[70:43]

That's why this is so subtle to tease these apart. So just to mention this second step in the meditation, because this could be the week's assignment, right? is the first step on the meditation itself and not-self is just to sit, basically like you might say Zazam already, let go of the past, future, all discursive thinking. It'd be easier said than done, right? But if we have some energy for this kind of meditation, we can say, I'm really going to just get settled here in order to do this next step, because it really, it's a lot different if you do this, All these next steps, when you're really calm and buoyant and concentrated, it's good to do them maybe before, just any time before meditation, because you can start to learn them and they don't become so clunky, and you can do them without reading the text or whatever. But at some point, get really still, and then all of the next steps are going to be really potent, really vivid, and that's kind of how it works.

[71:52]

So the second one is... is, you know, feeling the sense of I. It's kind of a feeling. You can feel the sense. And so it says here, carefully extract a small corner of the concentration. This is how they sometimes put it. Like you just kind of, you know, you can picture you're sitting in Zazen. You're really settled. You just have this kind of spacious awareness, right? And this is a metaphor, but like you, without disturbing the stillness, you just extract. pull out this little corner of this steel pond or something, right? It's a metaphor, but you can imagine this while you're sitting. You use a little aspect of your mind just to very calmly do this, because if you start getting really rough about this, then you'll lose the concentration. So extract carefully this small corner, and you use it to identify this clear, vivid, strong sense of the person meditating, which is a good way to put it when you're meditating, because that's there.

[72:59]

When you do the first step, you don't feel it. That's why that's the kind of nice, pleasant zazen to do. Just let go of it, get still, settled. I don't feel any sense of self. Now I'm going to intentionally bring it up. And you can ask it by like, okay, so who is this sitting here? And you start to feel, okay, there's me. I'm sitting here. And so... The incremental? Oh. They're just maintaining. How's the activity left? I think it's a very experiential thing. You have to check this out in meditation, but the rest of the mind just keeps this calm thing, calm state guard. So there's maybe this slight, very, very calm voice that's kind of checking out the calm and saying, is the body and mind still settled and calm?

[74:02]

It's kind of the assessor function. It's very gently saying, yeah, yeah, still calm. Okay, I'm bringing up the sense. I still feel settled. My breathing is deep. relaxed you know sort of that's all going on that's why they say you're doing this so this could be talked about the stillness is like the shamatha and then you're doing the vipassana side with this little corner because if you do with if the corner gets too big you'll lose the shamatha that's the problem but you can do this yeah yeah and it may be good to be really settled first yeah You have to just experience, this is a very, I think it's maybe different for each person, very experiential part, hard to talk about how this part goes. That's what you do very gently. It's kind of like this art of, you know, you're looking almost out of the corner of your eye, almost peripherally, but very vividly, too. But you can do this. Well, yeah, if you start to notice the calm part, you're getting too, like,

[75:07]

worked up about this self thing is getting too strong, or you're getting too excited by the whole meditation, then you just like, okay, like ease back on the vivid view. Just maybe let the vividness get a little, put the self aside for just a minute here, settle back down. It's very, like, you have to practice this a while, I think, actually, right? And you see, yeah, you're working it back and forth. These are ways of talking about it, but it's not really like they're two different things. I think the calmness, you almost want to let it take care of itself. Almost like you're not getting into looking at the calmness. Maybe to get into the calmness, you can say something to yourself, like, just let go. then when that works and you're kind of like letting go, then you kind of like let that, it's got its own momentum and you let that take care of itself.

[76:15]

That's where it helps to practice. If you're already just doing zazen in this way, good, it's good to like really cultivate that maybe for a while before you even do these steps, other steps, because then it becomes very familiar, that kind of resting place. You're identifying as grasping. Yeah, if you start to get into analyzing the stillness or something, then you get distracted from the self. So you're kind of like remembering, distinguishing these different steps as you go. So just to identify the self, it helps to silently say, I. And I works out better than me, I find, just because me is a little less personal. I is like what we say about ourselves. So literally, you can, to yourself, say, I. or owl. And interestingly for me, my birth name is Charlie. When I say Charlie to myself, it's stronger. Because that one was longer, I had that name longer, and I got it like when I was really young. So it's like that one actually, the self-sense is almost more identified.

[77:19]

It's like my parents call me that, right? Parental, yeah. So it's like stronger self. Like owl is like, I was already practicing. It's interesting to notice the difference. Yeah, it's a stronger, more vivid sense with the earlier name. So you could play with this, right? Imagine being falsely accused, frightened, praised, etc. Anything that brings up the self, right? So it doesn't have to be negative. You can imagine being really praised and getting into this really like, I did it! I'm doing it! And like, you know, they're really that kind of side. Mm-hmm. Same thing. It's me and I'm doing the meditation. I'm going to become a Buddha. That might work better. Although maybe not in a way because I think it's generally not as strong a sense as the negative ones. I think the negative ones bring up a stronger sense of self than the positive generally.

[78:20]

But you can try both. So like I wrote, sometimes the thought, I'll never be able to realize awakening, can help bring it up. Like, I can't do this practice. I'm like, what is he talking about finding this stuff? Like, that's the one. It's like, who's saying that, you know? That voice is saying that. It's like, don't get caught in the content and get all disturbed by the content. It's like, okay, so yeah, I'm disturbed. Good. This is the case where, like, I'm disturbed. It's like, but don't get into the disturbance. Like, so who is it that feels disturbed? I mean, it's the body and mind, but see if there's this view that's actually me, my independent, omnipotent self has been challenged. You know, somebody insulted it to try to cut down its omnipotence, and they can't do that. Something like this, right? So then stay focused on this sense and see whether it seems to exist inherently. So after you get a sense of it, look and like... in terms of this language, does it seem to exist by way of its own character, like, independently?

[79:26]

And to find, you can start to see, like, yeah, it actually does seem really... And then you lose it again. It's tricky. It's hard to keep it there, but by practice, you can keep it going. And then some of the Tibetan teachings say, like, this step you can do for, like, weeks at a time. You just, like, bring up this staying to get this really vivid sense of that false self. you can just, even months, just meditating on this, be like really unpleasant meditation, right? But in order to do this... Yeah, without going into that, and without trying to refute, this is the thing too, don't refute it too quickly, don't say, as soon as you start to get a little disturbed, that's the self, that's not real. In terms of this meditation, get really into it, you know, because it's worth getting really into, because if you refute it too quickly, just like... You might even say, I know from the beginning it's not there. So as soon as it starts to come up, that's not it. That's not real.

[80:27]

That's okay, but actually more, I think, powerful in a way to get a really strong sense of it, a really clear sense of it, and then start doing the analysis or the reasoning. Partly because the contrast of when you see this really strong thing being completely unfindable, while it's really strong, that contrast is, um, the wonderful part, right? And the contrast is so vivid and, um, maybe frightening and, um... What contrast? The contrast between this really strong sense of the inherently existing me and, and also, and then you start to bring in the skandhas part later, when you get it really strong, you can start to, like, say, okay, now, so now, is this the same as this, like, You can go through one skanda at a time, like this list, or you can bring up the whole set, body and mind, constantly changing. Is it the same? Actually, no, it seems like it must be different, and then we're going to get into Nagarjuna.

[81:33]

If it were the same, there'd be these problems where it couldn't be the same, but if it were different, there's going to be these problems that can't be different. So therefore, we're not going to be able to find it, even though it seems really vivid and strong. The point being that actually it's going to keep being vivid and strong, it's going to keep seeming vivid and strong until the eighth Bodhisattva stage, when we're like almost a Buddha. So the thing is like, we're not, it's never going to, you know, virtually, probably in our life, it's going to keep appearing to be this way. But through this meditation, you can see this appearance, we can come to actually be completely convinced that this really strong, convincing appearance really, really, is just a conceptual fabrication of the mind. And this is the point. The point is mostly like, so while it's happening, because it's going to keep happening, that we're not going to fall for it. It's not going to disappear. At some point, at the eighth... That's the awareness of the delusion.

[82:39]

Yes, exactly. That's Dogen saying, those who have great realization of delusion are Buddhas, right in the midst of understanding that delusion. completely, and not having it disappeared, but right in the midst of it. And this is also the non-duality of delusion and enlightenment. That's also the same as the fox, where he says, does karma not exist for someone who practices? Yeah. And he says, well, it doesn't exist, and then he becomes a fox. Or they don't fall into cause and effect. Right answers. They know about it. Yeah, not blind to it. Yeah, they understand. They're not confused by cause and effect. Enlightened person doesn't end, yeah, exactly, same point. Enlightened person doesn't end dependent co-arising and conditionality and being, you know, going along with conditions.

[83:40]

But because they see it clearly, they're completely free in the midst of conditioned process. body and mind. If you see this, understand this, will all the characteristics of the self and all the attributes of it, like the commenter and the controller, in the sense that it's eternal, will some of that fade away or does it keep coming up to you? I don't think fade away exactly as in terms of what we're saying. It's like those things are all still there but no longer believe in them. It's just like a rising and falling. Or they're maybe even vividly there, but we know in the core of our being that they're simply conceptual imputations. So maybe not even fading. Maybe in a way they're like, we can't take them seriously anymore, something like that. So... Yeah, and this might seem like, well, already I don't believe in that. Before I even came here, I already heard this teaching about not-self. I know it doesn't make any sense. I don't believe it.

[84:42]

And kind of like what Barrett was saying, it's like, well, Zen-centered, don't we all believe in this? Don't we all agree with this no-self thing? And intellectually, we do, right? Or maybe this is a new thing to some people, but you might quickly become convinced intellectually, but that's not enough, right? So this has to be conjoined with deeply working this in meditation in a concentrated state, and also going over it again and again and again. And particularly every time some suffering comes up, that's a trigger. It could be a trigger. Like, okay, here's my opportunity for this particular practice. Like, I just got something happened, and like, here it is. Like, okay, so is this one who feels... I mean, there's a feeling, and next time we should get into the five skandhas and really delineate those exactly, because you can start to see how this whole body-mind-person thing can work very fine, just with the description of the five skandhas.

[85:48]

It doesn't have to be this independent self to make this very dynamic activity of a person happen. Louie had a question. A long time ago. Yeah. No, we still have five seconds. Okay, so yeah, I think the main point is, you know, maybe get into the second step of the meditation without going on to the skandhas thing yet. You could just do it for a week if you want. Just really try to... discern this view, and I find personally that it, as you do that, it does get more vivid. At first it might be really, really hard, actually, to see this view. It's very elusive, and it doesn't want to be found. It's like a fish swimming around and trying to grab it.

[86:49]

It's like, because it's trying to, in a way, it's got this life of its own. It's trying to protect itself from being found what it is. It's almost hiding from this investigation. So this investigation is like, it's going to almost trap it. It's going to like corner it in these actually two corners where it could be. And it's going to not, if it doesn't find it in one, it's going to look in the other. And if it doesn't find it there, it's going to like, the fish will kind of wither away and disappear, but it'll still continue to appear. Well, if you find it and it's really uncomfortable, then what practice is there? investigate, then start investigating. The discomfort. And what is this thing in the field? And what is the discomfort? Maybe you don't even need to get into that. You could just feel the discomfort. The practice would be just let the discomfort be the discomfort.

[87:50]

But still... Keep with the view, yeah. And then eventually, these next steps will eliminate the discomfort, maybe. So, thanks for bearing. with this.

[88:01]

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