Speaking with Kokyo earlier on I thought I might just begin with a few short reflections and then would like to open things up for people's questions because I'm sure you have all kinds of things that you might like to ask and it's very easy to talk at people but many of you I haven't met before I don't know so rather than just sort of making it a one-way delivery for this time, I thought it would be most helpful to have something of a dialogue. So I'll just begin by reciting the Namutasa, the homage to the Triple Gem, first of all. Namo tasa bhagavato arahato sama sambhu tasa Namo tasa bhagavato arahato sama sambhu tasa

[01:11]

As Kokyo said earlier today that maybe I would be speaking a little bit about Nibbana or Nirvana in Sanskrit. So I'll start off with a little bit about that. Maybe first with a caveat saying, I don't really know how, within the Zen tradition, how much you speak about Nirvana or how often it plays into your general... or the way that your Dharma teachings are framed.

[02:13]

But it's one of those words that gets knocked around casually in ordinary common speeches about going to nirvana, some kind of super heaven, or we have a vague idea of it, perhaps, as some kind of... ultra-pleasant place at the end of a spiritual life lived to its completeness. But we don't really have an idea or don't really have a clear sense of what that word is referring to. And maybe when people have questions or we have some discussion, I'd be interested to know how nirvana gets spoken of. I know in certain sutras, like the Lotus Sutra, it certainly gets some mention. So I'd be curious just to know how that appears within your realm. One of the reasons that Ajahn Pasana, the co-abbot at Abhayagiri and myself put this book together, this is our baby.

[03:22]

You see, monks and nuns do have babies occasionally. This is my baby. So we put this together was because of the fact that... there's not a very clear understanding of where nirvana fits into the whole picture. And also the fact that, at least in the Theravada scriptures, the Pali canon, the Buddha didn't speak about it a whole lot. And though when he does, it's usually with very sort of simple or prosaic kind of expressions. So rather than trying to conjure up very... elaborate metaphysical descriptions or poetic descriptions about nirvana even though it's the goal of the spiritual life the realization of nirvana for us is synonymous with the goal of the spiritual life or what's experienced a complete enlightenment when the Buddha would describe it he would just say things like it's peaceful or it's the good

[04:33]

Or it's worth realizing. And that's about it. That's all you get. You know, just a few little scraps, you know, just a few crumbs, like the blue jays coming in to pick up, and the little chickadees and towies and whatnot. You just get a few scraps. But, yes, and most of his teachings, at least in the Pali canon, are geared towards the method of realization. So rather than talking all about what's on the mountain, he spends most of his time describing which direction the mountain is in and how to get there. So that's one interesting element of it in the first place, is that rather than trying to conceive the inconceivable, the Buddha said, well, don't try and do that. And then, at least in the... Pali expression of things that say 95-98% of the time of his teachings goes to the nature of the path.

[05:40]

One of the reasons why we did this book was also because in the West we have a tend to have a very non-theistic people who are interested in Buddhism and in spiritual realization have often a disaffection towards theistic expressions of things. There's an aversion to talking about a creator god or some kind of supreme entity who's pulling strings and making things happen. But we certainly have some sort of intonation of an ultimate reality, some kind of fundamental nature or organizing principle that is beyond our own ordinary senses. And when I came from Thailand, at the end, back in the late 70s, came back to England, and I was studying with Ajahn Sumaito, who's an American monk. One thing that really struck me was that, whereas in Thailand they hardly ever talked about Nibbana, they never talked about ultimate reality, it was always just, as in the scriptures, the path, [...] the path.

[06:54]

And... When I came to England, Ajahn Sameda was talking about ultimate reality all the time and even throwing God in a few times. It was very striking. He keeps on talking about ultimate truth and Nibbana and the nature of God all over the place. It was one of the very few direct questions I asked him because mostly he provided the answers to everything that came across my mind as he went along. He said, well... The reason why I talk about it a lot is because most people in the West, they're disaffected from theistic religions, and they have faith in Buddhism, but they don't really have a sense of what's the goal of the spiritual life. There's no real concept in the West of an ultimate reality that is not some kind of supreme being. So therefore, he said... I find it useful, helpful to be talking about ultimate truth and ultimate reality, about nibbana, to help give people a picture, to give them a sense of, yes, there is something beyond our ordinary sense world, and there is an ultimate reality, and that's the basis of all truth, the basis of all teaching, and the goal of spiritual life is to realize that.

[08:12]

And so, because in Asia, there's more that sense of, there's a faith already in that. and that quality but in the West we only have that spelled out in terms of a theistic form so I took that really to heart and I thought well that's really important to not be shy about talking about ultimate reality about nirvana but to be ready to put that into the air and to talk about that because if we're disaffected with theistic religions or materialism is leaving us lonely and and depressed. You know, the sort of existential... I mean, you look at a picture of Jean-Paul Sartre or Samuel Beckett at the end of their lives, they look pretty wrinkly, pretty harrowed people. They might have had a lot of useful and wonderful gifts to offer, but these are not very happy people. So, the...

[09:17]

the need or the usefulness of reflecting on this area of spiritual life. And certainly in the northern tradition, in Zen Buddhism, it's a lot more spoken of. And I think it's one of the reasons why Zen Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism are very popular in the West is because those teachings do get addressed a lot more. But I feel it's a very useful subject, even though it might seem a bit abstruse or remote. at times. And so that was one of the reasons why we put the book together was for people with an interest in, say, the Theravada tradition and also Buddhism in general, spirituality in general, have a resource for the places where the Buddha does talk about that. So we pulled together all of the references that we could find and various teachings from the Pali canon that refer to the ultimate truth and also have seemingly informed many of the the other Buddhist traditions, like from China, Tibet, Japan, Korea, in later years. And so that it's interesting to see how things line up, like some of the Pali teachings in the Vajra Sutra or the Prajnaparamita Sutras and such like.

[10:27]

So, Nibbana. Nibbana literally means something like chilled out. That's what Nibbuti means to cool down, to cool, to be... to be chilled, to be cool. So just as I'm coming in out of the hot sun, here Tassahara's climate is very like our monastery, Abhagiri. Coming out of the hot sun into the cool shade, you go, that's it, that's Nibbana. It's just that simple coming into the cool. And certainly in the Pali teachings, the Buddha tended to use very ordinary... homey language. He used ordinary household terms rather than sophisticated or abstruse philosophical terms from his time. So, like the word, he used the five skandhas or five kandhas in Pali. That just means the five heaps. like sort of five piles, like, you've got the fine sand over here, coarse sand here, gravel, you know, pea gravel, and you've got the road rock over here, these five heaps.

[11:41]

That's all that khandra is, just a heap. So similarly, Nibbana just means cool down. And for the, representing the ultimate goal of spiritual life, that was kind of a radical term for the Buddha to use to describe the experience of ultimate truth. But he... He was brilliant, as I'm sure all of us realize, picking the mojust, the right word, to catch the spirit of a particular quality. So Nibbana means literally cool down. It's a household term they use to say, like if the rice is cooked, like here in the kitchen, when the rice is just boiled, it's still too hot to eat, so you put it off to the side to cool down a bit. That's nibbana-ing the rice. Really, that's how the word's used. You let the rice nibbana for a while, so then it's the right temperature to eat. Really. So it's not a complicated thing. And then other definitions of it are just like the heart freed from greed, hatred, and delusion, which doesn't really seem like a lot until we try to do it.

[12:57]

So one of the things also about nirvana as a term, or nirvana, is a description of an experience. It's like an adjectival noun, if you like. It's that feeling of cooling down. And the way it's used in the Pali tradition, Theravada, is to say when the heart is completely in accord with nature, completely in accord with ultimate reality, when it's totally freed from greed, hatred, and delusion, what is experienced is Nibbana, which is a quality of coolness, of peacefulness, of purity, and of radiance, a quality of brightness. Purity, radiance, peacefulness. In Thai it comes across as sawang sa'at samu, very nicely alliterative. So that really encapsulates what the word is used for.

[14:08]

So it's describing an experience. It's not trying to do much more than that, just as the Buddha used the word that was referring to cooling down. It's just referring to that quality of experience, the felt tone of the moment. when the heart is freed from all greed, hatred and delusion and is totally awakened to nature, to dhamma. Now there are various different ways of accessing that or bringing about that coming into accord and so I won't try and enumerate all of them here. But one subject that Kokyo was bringing up earlier today was He was leafing through the book. I just gave him a copy yesterday. And he was leafing through it and was remarking today about how central the teachings on impermanence seem to be. In our scriptures, in our way of practice, the key way of developing, or the classical way of developing wisdom, is the reflection on what's called the three characteristics of existence.

[15:22]

say in zazen, when the mind is focused on the present moment, it will be recognizing the three characteristics of anicca, dukkha, anatta, which is anicca usually translated as impermanence, dukkha, unsatisfactoriness, and then anatta, not self. Seeing that these are qualities that every experience, whether we call it inside, outside, coarse, fine, sacred, profane, mundane, whether it's a feeling in your ankle, whether it's the sound of the the stream, or whether it's a blazing insight, all of these are transient. They are unsatisfactory insofar as they can't make us totally happy forever. And they're not self. They have no owner. They're not who and what we are in any complete and absolute way. Now, those reflections, they're not philosophical positions. They're more like tools for reflection. So people say, well, the Buddha said that there is no self. as a kind of philosophical position or that we're supposed to believe that everything's impermanent.

[16:26]

Well, that's not really true. The way these teachings are put across and they're used, they're an analytical method. They're like a set of tools, like socket wrenches, you know, like, okay, which size socket, what shape do you want on your socket wrench or your Allen keys, you know, or which size knife do you need to chop which vegetables in the kitchen? So they're a set of tools to bring about particular effects. So they're ways of examining our experience. So to ask ourselves, well, is this changing? Is this something that's here forever? Is this totally satisfactory? Can this make me happy permanently? Or is this truly me and mine? Does this mind state, does this sound have an owner? And then in that questioning, that exploring, then the mind is freed from... its obstructions, its habituated delusions. So then, whenever the Buddha taught this kind of method or approached this, he almost always began with a teaching on impermanence.

[17:33]

And it's also very striking, something Kokyo brought up was how when there's a description of someone entering the stream, the first stage of enlightenment, I'm not sure if that's Kensho or Satori or one of those. in your language. But when someone has that initial breakthrough into realization, that often the way it's characterized is, the insight is characterized as, and then they knew, all that is subject to arising is subject to cessation. Everything that begins, ends. What goes up, must come down. Which, on one level, doesn't seem like very much. And... And, you know, waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is the big insight, you know. Well, I figured that out when I was three, you know. So how come I still managed to shed tears and get angry and such? But one of the reasons why that's recognized is that if we, I would suggest, if we really know, if the heart is really awakened to the fact that everything,

[18:47]

that arises, passes away. If that really sinks into our bones and into our marrow, then the world changes. The nature, the view of the subject changes, the view of the object changes, the whole nature of the way that our life and mind is experienced changes. There's a little teaching, maybe if I can push it out. that sprang to mind in this respect, which is the advice the Buddha gave to a monk called Meghya, who'd gone off. He was a very keen meditator and wanted to go off and spend the day by himself sitting out in the forest. And the Buddha said, well, I don't think you're quite ready for a day solo, Meghya. You're not really... that experienced, and this might not be a good idea. Meghia says, no, no, no, it's a great idea, I really want to, I really want to. The Buddha says, no, I don't think it's a good idea, Meghia. And of course, I don't know how it is in your scriptures, but now they do everything three times.

[19:49]

So after the third time, the Buddha says, okay, Meghia, well, do whatever you want to do. And then he goes off and spends the day in this little grove, and his mind is beset with all kinds of confused and upset and agitated, unwholesome thoughts and feelings. And he comes and drags himself back to the Buddha in the evening and says, oh, You were right. And then the Buddha gives him this wonderful collection of advice. And at the end of it he says, Mindfulness of breathing should be practiced for the purpose of cutting off discursive thoughts. The perception of impermanence should be cultivated for the purpose of eliminating the conceit I am. For when a person perceives impermanence, Perception of not-self becomes established in them. And when a person perceives not-self, they arrive at the elimination of the conceit I am, and that is nibbana here and now. So it's a very simple little chain of causation.

[20:51]

By seeing impermanence, then that helps to cut right through the conceit of identity as mimana, the self-view. And then when that's let go of, then that enables the heart to break right through. to the realization of Dhamma itself. And which, as he says, that is the experience of Nibbāna here and now. So the way of summing that up is to say, when I realize everything is uncertain, then I can let go of myself. When we see everything is uncertain, we can let go of self-concern. And right there is the realization of Nibbāna. Very simple. So by way of a little synopsis or a thumbnail sketch of things, I'll leave it there. And please invite any kind of questions or comments or clarifications needed. Please ask whatever you like.

[21:52]

This time is for you. Please, yeah. Yes, don't be shy. Yes. Yes. Isn't it? I think about five months, she spent 60 or 70 years teaching, and before she died, which was about letting go, before she died she said something like, I could just weep for joy at letting go when it's not so easy.

[23:07]

Oh yes. Yeah, I actually, I met Charlotte Silva years and years ago at Esalen one time. She was leading a workshop. She was a mere 94 or 95 at the time. She was Ruth Denison's original teacher as well. Ruth was one of the great lights of the Theravada world. Well, it's the age-old, the way it sounds to me, the way you represent that, it's the age-old tussle between the ego or the self-view and the heart itself. The heart says, yes, let go, great.

[24:20]

And the ego says, well, wait a minute. Hang on a minute. And that kind of dynamic is so much the bones and the flesh of spiritual practice of our heart. We hear the Dhamma teachings of something and it says, yeah, that's true, that's right, absolutely. And then all of the complex of self-created habits the attachments and fears, aversions, opinions, wherever the sense of self gets clustered and perfected, then that's what creates that resistance and the hardness. And one of the things about meeting the unknown, an expression that I often use, is that when we meet the unknown, the heart responds to that with a very different attitude than the ego.

[25:23]

When the ego meets with the unknown, it responds with fear and contraction. It shuts down and armors itself or defends itself, contends against that. When the heart itself meets the unknown, then what it experiences is wonderment and faith. It's the same unknown, but the heart says, yes, it's totally mysterious. I don't have a clue what's happening. And there's wonderment there, whereas the ego immediately feels threat. There's a lovely, one of the Upanishads, I believe, opens with the words, something like, originally... Originally there was only the mind of the absolute filling the presence of the great void. And then in the mind of the absolute there arose the thought, I am. With the thought, I am, there arose fear. And following fear there arose desire.

[26:25]

And even though it's spoken about in slightly cosmological terms, you can see that happening on a minute by minute basis in our minds. And that the more that I am, I am good, I'm bad, I'm a woman, I'm a man, I'm old, I'm young, I'm a Zenny, I'm a Theravadan, you know, I'm confused. Any I am or me, mine, all of those, the more they are bought into, then the more there is that sense of dissociation from reality and the more contracted there if we find ourselves. And letting go is difficult. The more that that quality of the I am's, the I, me, mine creations, conceivings, that as we call it manyati in the Pali, the more that we recognize, oh this is just a conception, I am is a conception.

[27:36]

mind is a conception, it's a conceiving, the mind is conjuring this up. The more that can be, the I am feeling can be seen just as another feeling that arises and passes, then there's much less of that resistance to letting go, there's much less to let go of. But in a way that's the center the real nucleus of spiritual practice is that dynamic, the experience of that dynamic and learning to recognize what's the voice of the heart and what's the voice of the self-contraction. Yeah, it's not easy. It's the most, like the Buddha said, it's easy It's easier to conquer an army of a thousand a thousand times over than it is to conquer yourself.

[28:42]

Which at least lets us know what the game is. You're not going to be overestimating. base expression is pretty much the same of and just feeling more equanimity about things that I'm feeling a little bit. I'm not sure when I'm practicing in a way that it's life-enriching. So I'm wondering if you More reggae? No. Sorry, just joking.

[29:52]

That wasn't a very monthly comment, but... Well, one of the things that is... With all of the... the aspects of mind training, they're a quality like equanimity, which is a wholesome, bright and beautiful quality, developing an even-mindedness. What's called its near enemy, I don't know if you have a similar expression in Zen, but it looks like it, but it's counterpointed to it, is that we can be just numbing and dulling everything down. That we're not being equanimous, we're actually just learning to be numb. We're learning to not feel. And that's based on what's called vibhavatanna, or the desire to not be, the desire to get rid of.

[30:58]

And when the Buddha outlined in the Four Noble Truths, the desire or the craving that's the cause of dukkha, of dissatisfaction. There are three parts to it. There are three kinds of desire that he outlines. The first one is the one that gets most page space, which is sense desire, like desire for things to see and hear and smell and taste and touch. But for most people who are involved in spiritual training, the more problematic ones are the other two, the sort of junior partners, which are bhavatanna and vibavatanna, the desire to become and the desire to get rid of. So bhavatanna disguises itself as working hard at your practice, trying to get enlightened, trying to be a good person, trying to be a... an impressive yogi trying to succeed. So it sounds like all the kind of things I said, yeah, well, that's what I try to do every day.

[32:01]

What's wrong with that? Trying to get concentrated, trying to develop inside, trying. But it's all me trying to become something, me trying to get. And so that it takes noble efforts and then it's co-opted by the self-sense. And its opposite partner is Vibhavatam. It's like trying to get rid of anger, get rid of selfishness, get rid of laziness, get rid of unruly thinking, get rid of jealousy and so on. And to look at many of the texts, and these are all things that are, well, yeah, those are all highlighted as unskillful things. I'm supposed to get rid of them, aren't I? But then what happens is that rather than just seeing the unskillfulness of those qualities and letting them go, What's happening is that the mind creates an aversion, a sort of flattening, a rejection of those, and this creates this quality of numbness, dullness, and unfeelingness.

[33:07]

But we miss it. We don't see what we're doing because it disguises itself as, well, I'm just letting go here. I'm supposed to not react to angry feelings. I'm supposed to make my mind stop thinking. And so because of that, they slip under the wire. so becoming aware or bringing attention to that feeling of annihilation and then particularly when you notice that attitude arising or you see yourself responding in that way try to notice what it's like in the body the wanting to get rid of a feeling or a thought or a mind state what's that like? where do you feel it in your body? what's the felt sense of that? Similarly, if someone has the opposite tendency of becoming, of getting caught up in being and doing and ambition, the most helpful way to track it is to feel it in the body, see if you can detect that.

[34:13]

Rather than trying to just lively up yourself or override that numbness, that dullness, The more that we fully let it be known, then without any sort of self-critical commentary, it's like, well, here it is. This is the feeling of numbness. This is the feeling of being emotionally dead. This is what it's like. The more that we can just know that and have no commentary to it, then something in us realizes that this is something I'm doing. This isn't just happening, this is something that I am doing, and therefore I cannot do it. And in that same spaciousness of just holding it, then we can find, this is how I find it works, is that in that very moment you can recognize, well, why do I want to do this to myself? And something relaxes right there. And...

[35:15]

that there's a, in that recognizing, yeah, I'm doing this to myself and I don't have to do it, then it's just like holding your hand on a hot plate, like, ow! Ow! You don't have to think a lot about it, it's just, you know, you pull the hand away. So similarly, you're tapping into that same intuitive sense of, why would I want to do this to myself? And then there's a relaxation that happens, not because... you heard it from a teacher or because you feel you should, but because how? It's a very natural, intuitive letting go. And then in that, when you see that response happening in yourself, just then notice, okay, now how does it feel when that letting go happens, even if it's just for half a second? A second. Now how does this feel? What's the quality of this? And then it's letting that inform you as well, like, That's different. And then it might be a second later, the clamps come down again.

[36:18]

But in that moment, you've really seen it clearly. And you know, okay, that's the path. Just seeing that, knowing that subtle kind of clinging to wanting to get rid of, and then really knowing that and letting go of that. Yeah, there's one at the back there. Yes. All analogies are partial, you know. Uh-huh.

[37:38]

And so if you do this, if you're halfway through clipping rice and you stop, pull it off, and that is the sign, so you pull that also, but I get the idea that there's an appropriate time to pull that off. Well, yeah, you could say it that way. I mean, like I said, all analogies are partial, you know, so that you... It's not like a universally applicable image. But I can see what you're pointing to, and I would agree. If what you want to do is to eat the rice, then it needs to cook longer. But this is talking about a simple contrast of experiences. When you put the rice straight off the boiler into your mouth, ow! When you're standing out in the sunshine at one o'clock in the afternoon and you're there and you're cooking in the sun and then you just come out of the heat and then you come into the shade of the tree.

[38:43]

That's it. No more complicated than that. So it's saying, yeah, it's from that state of heatedness into the quality of cool. Also, one of the things that struck me was that, well, if the Buddha had been teaching in Norway, or Scotland, he wouldn't have used coolness. If the Buddha was a Norwegian or a Scot, he wouldn't say, get into the cool. It would be, get into the croft and warm yourself up by the fire. Because in the north, it's the cold, dark, the empty, desolation, You know, the bitter winds, the dark of winter, that's the oppressive presence. The threat in Europe, in northern Europe, the threat is the winter. In Asia, the threat is the hot, blazing sun of summer. And so that it's just an analogy that he used based on where he lived.

[39:48]

Yeah. So this term that he used for Nirvana seems very down to earth, and I'm wondering if this... The disappearance of the I am is really something much simpler than this kind of mushy, indistinct, undifferentiated consciousness. Could it be more like the chill or the calm when you're, you know, you don't feel like you are somehow in the ether, but maybe you're just not grasping to itself. Yeah, exactly. It's not some sort of big metaphysical cosmic event. It's just when you're not, that moment when you're not being selfish. You know, when we stop thinking about ourselves and we let go of self-concern, it's just that. It's not grandiose at all. And then the... So looking at where we cling and we create that sense of self around opinions, around our body, around our possessions, around just the...

[40:56]

personal history. There are all of these areas of life that the feeling of I clusters around, just seeing where it appears and recognizing, oh, that's not really who and what I am, or why should it be me first? Why not you first? So it's in the 10,000 simple instances of where the I feeling arises and that clusters. and gets born, that's the place where we let go. You know, maybe in some, like in a session or when you're in a period of intense practice, then maybe it's much easier to sort of dig down deeper into the sort of engine of those habits and to... uproot that in a more comprehensive way, but more often than not, it's just that simple day-to-day, moment-to-moment noticing of, I think I want, you know, if you want to know my opinion, that all that habitual I-making and my-making, it's called ahankara mamankara in Pali.

[42:12]

Ahankara, ahang means I am, karate is to make, ahankara mamankara. And And that feeling of I-ness and me-ness and mine-ness. It's kind of interesting that in Pali, the word for mine is mama. That's the primordial owning, right? Mama. You know, that's my mother. For the infant, that's the first object that is mine, is the mother. And mama is literally the Pali word for mine. And so seeing the strength of those habits and seeing how often they pop up and just bringing that quality of attention to seeing where it comes up and then letting it go right there. Our teacher Ajahn Chah would say, you scratch where it itches. If it itches on your leg, you don't scratch your head. So if you see the sense of self arising around an opinion, say...

[43:15]

Say your friend, you know, she thinks this and you think that. You think, she's wrong. You know, just think, oh, that's... Look at the mind grasping my opinion. I'm right, she's wrong. And just noticing that arising, like, I'm right. And then, look at that. And seeing that arising. Not that you might totally discard your point of view. It's not a matter of not having any opinions. When you, it's what they call a tadangana nibbana or momentary nibbana. So that if you, in that moment when there's a letting go of that self-view, that if you notice, then that right there is the experience of nibbana. There is a moment of genuine peacefulness and clarity. But most often we miss it because peace is really uninteresting. Peace does not catch our attention. Space and silence are really boring.

[44:19]

It's true. It's like in this room, when we come in this room, we notice the people. We notice each other. We don't notice the space in the room. Space doesn't catch our attention. Peace is not interesting. The only times we tend to notice peace or silence is when the refrigerator switches off. Actually, this is a kind of non-electric place that doesn't really work so well here. But when you've lived in places with refrigerators or the air conditioning, and it switches off, and you go, ah. The thermostat shuts down, and then you haven't noticed there'd been a buzzing going on in the background. And then it stops. Ah. And you enjoy that silence for one, two, three seconds, and then So what else is going on around here? And that's how it works, that peace is interesting as long as it's juxtaposed to agitation. But if it's not, then we just don't notice it.

[45:23]

So that most often when we let go of things and we really... find those moments of peace, we miss them because our senses are all tuned to get onto the next interesting thing, something that I need to do or something that I can eat, something that's going to eat me or something, you know, somebody I can mate with or whatever. You know, our senses are geared to those hunter-gatherer light and that we... And that, if you're living as a hunter-gatherer, if you're in the animal realm, you want to know, can I eat it? Is it going to eat me? Can I mate with it? And has it just entered my territory? That's what our eyes and our ears and our nose and our tongue and our body are geared to do. So they're not geared to say, oh, notice, isn't this piece beautiful? Let's enjoy the silence. It doesn't happen very easily. The senses are wired. to notice objects, not to notice space.

[46:26]

And so that's why Zazen is a brilliant practice. You're just training yourself to not pursue thoughts and to pursue objects, to just be aware of what's being experienced without partiality. Is that right? Sort of, kind of? Yeah. And it's been there all the time. Well, in a manner of speaking, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, where is a good question.

[47:29]

Because the mind doesn't exist any place. And there's this, I don't know if you guys studied the Shurangama Sutra in the Japanese tradition. It's a Chinese sutra. And it has this very, very long dialogue between the Buddha and Ananda. And the Buddha's asking Ananda, where is your mind? And Ananda tries all these different permutations of, you know, it's like, it's in my brain, or it's in my eyes, or it's out in the inside, outside. And everything that Ananda puts up, the Buddha says, no, it couldn't be there, Ananda, because... And after about a hundred pages of this, then Ananda says, please, Lord, enlighten us, tell me where my mind is. Because nothing he can come up with. And the Buddha says the mind cannot be said to be anywhere. Because three-dimensional space only applies to the rupa, skanda, the form, to the material world.

[48:33]

The mind does not exist in three-dimensional space. We say, you know, my mind or... But these are just figurative ways of talking about it because the... It's only the world of form that space applies to. Location doesn't apply in the world of mind. The mind is unlocated. But then the mind is. But you can't say that it is anywhere. So in a way, it's very interesting to investigate that question. Just ask yourself, where is the mind? And the habitual patterns of thinking have to fall flat. They have to collapse in the face of that. So that's a way to explore that. Non-locality. And then the other part of your question was about...

[49:40]

The heart. Well, it's the same saying. It depends how you use the word, really. Well, it depends how you use the word. Different people use the words in different ways. So in the word citta in Pali is usually translated as heart, sometimes as heart-mind. It's that quality which... which is aware and which knows things. So when there is liberation, it's the citta that is liberated, the heart that is liberated. And oftentimes people think of mind as if it had a small M being the engine of thought, that which creates thinking. But other people use mind as big mind. You know, that which is the entire non-physical dimension of being.

[50:46]

And so that you need to know how the person is using the term or to listen and to see whether the way you use the words is the same as the way other people use the words. So I would use heart for saying that aspect of our mental world, which is... has the quality of awareness, and it's that which is liberated. It's that which knows Nibbana, if you like, or knows ultimate truth. And also it's, but it's, the nature of mind is also, its nature is also the ultimate truth. So when the mind is enlightened, or the heart is enlightened, then it is, it's the heart knowing its own nature, the Dhamma knowing its own nature. I wouldn't say they are separate in an absolute way.

[51:49]

It's just like, you know, this glass, I call it glass because it's convenient to call it glass rather than calling it tasahara. It's a part of tasahara, but it's not the whole of it. But I can say, if I said, could you pass me that tasahara? You know, it's like... It's a little piece of it, and it is part of everything that Tassahara is, but it's just, when you say the ego, it's just one aspect of the whole, say, mental realm. So it's not creating some kind of false division on an absolute level, but just on a relative level, you can say, this is the jug, this is the glass, this is my clock. So just for convenience sake, you say that there's the ego on one side and the heart on the other.

[52:53]

Because the substance of both, they're all just of the same nature. They're all Dhamma. Does that make sense? When you talked about heart and mind and how they need known, I guess what's coming up for me around mind is the sense of self, like when the sense of self meets the unknown, it's disarming to the sense of self, and that sense of self was trying to relate to it from a place of certainty, make itself feel certain, and that's where I feel, at least I've experienced that constriction. So that's how I understand what the man by mind is. Well, that was the words I used. I said when the ego meets the unknown, or the sense of self meets the unknown. interesting that even though the senses can get us in trouble, but it also seems to be like this is a body practice. Senses are what we're doing to pay attention to our body, pay attention to what's going on for us in the moment, so that we fully experience the moment from a less ego-oriented place.

[54:08]

Our body and our senses, they're the ground of liberation as well as being They're troublemakers. They work for both companies. Yeah, you can say that. Well, it's like the concepts also, I like the word conceivings. Yeah, and also because when we think of a concept, we think of like an idea. But any conceivings, anything that the mind sort of puts together and makes into a solid thing, because the more that the mind creates solid things, like this is a real and absolute table, or this is an absolute watch, or an absolute human, the more that it conceives those things as solid, separate, distinct entities, then the more we create alienation and discord. And the more that we see the...

[55:11]

the world as dynamic aspects of Dhamma, or as Buckminster Fuller put it, I'm a verb. If we see that the world is all verbs and adverbs, then it changes it. And that when we believe in those conceivings to be real solid things, in exact proportion to that, buying into it, then we create dislocation and alienated me that's experiencing a world out there. There was a hand here. being stuck in this suffering, if that comes from the body and that's sort of where it originates?

[56:19]

I wouldn't say it originates there. I'd say the body and our feelings are an access point to that. It's not that the body is the cause of it, it's more like the body is just a fellow manifestation of all those different aspects of the living, the living world, and that wherever we are entangled or there's things that are out of harmony, then we can generally pick those up through the body. And often the body is the best access point, particularly with emotional states. Like if you're angry or you're jealous or you're afraid or you're inspired or, you know, excited, that the mind easily goes to the object, the thing that you're inspired by or frightened of or jealous of, and we get lost in the labyrinth pretty quickly. But if we bring it back to the body and say, well, where does that jealousy sit?

[57:21]

How does this excitement feel in the body? Where is it? And to know that in as direct and uncomplicated a way as possible, then that gives you a... And the more that we can meet that, even if it's a really unpleasant, uncomfortable state, like anger, then the more that we're able to... There's an ability for that to be known directly. So this is what anger feels like. It's like this. And you feel the heat and vibration in the body. Then just in knowing that and accepting that just as a feeling, then to a degree you're accepting where it came from. And that very acceptance is the balancing agent. You're not saying it's a great thing to be angry or how wonderful it is to be afraid or jealous. But you're rather recognizing, oh, this too is an aspect of nature. This too is part of it and it belongs.

[58:24]

So in that quality of acceptance, just of the feeling, you've helped bring things into balance as to what it was that caused that feeling, and then thereby letting it go and not recreating that imbalance in the future. Yeah. I'm just wondering, why did it improve for you? I mean, I'm particularly interested in this because Dovin actually had a development of the notion of non-extension .

[59:25]

I'd like to know what it should be about nature. Well, dharma is nature, to my understanding. In the Pali, dhamma-jati means born of the dhamma, or of the nature of dhamma. And in Thai language, that's the word for nature, tamacat, means natural or ordinary. The word for tamacat means it's natural, like the environment, or it's according to human nature. so it's from the Pali tradition it's very ordinary to think of Dhamma as the natural world and the way that the mind and body work are all part of the workings of Dhamma it's a very matter of fact connection yeah

[60:37]

It always puzzles me when people say, I really like being out in nature. Where do you live normally? Where do you park your body while you're not in nature? Seriously, I'm not trying to be clever. I do an internal double take. How could you not be in nature? I mean, I know what they mean. They like to be out amongst the trees and the mountains and such, and away from the human constructions. But I think it's more of an artifact of the Western way of thinking and that divorce of somehow humanity or nature is an error or humanity is some sort of aberration from the natural order. But to me, it's not only just a... natural way of speaking, but also it fits the Dharma teachings quite perfectly.

[61:40]

It matches my experience of things. When you see so much of what we find disturbing or difficult about ourselves or about the world, we would tend to think it somehow is outside of nature or it's unnatural or it's wrong. in some absolute way or some aspect of our being is really off. Completely aberrant. There's something about me that is completely alien. And there's a basic wrongness that we can feel. And part of that is the Judeo-Christian conditioning. Well, violence is part of nature. Selfishness is part of nature. Stupidity is part of nature.

[62:42]

But if we reject that and hate that and call that the enemy and contend against it, our very contention makes the problem worse. It brings more confusion and agitation into it. Whereas when I recognize that the anger I might feel or the... selfishness that I feel is part of the natural order, then I'm not setting it up as the enemy, but it doesn't mean to say I have to go along with it. If we're seeing it as, yeah, this is not alien, but if this is followed, then this is going to cause pain and confusion, then that encourages us to not be starting a war with it, but also finding ways that we can, say, not condone it or not follow it. Now, that might sound a bit wishy-washy, or I'm missing the point, but to me it's an extremely significant area of practice, and on a political level it's really important.

[63:48]

If you refuse to make somebody into an enemy, it doesn't mean to say that you agree with all their policies. This comes up as an issue a lot. Yes, I love you completely, and I refuse to hate you, but no, I'm not going to get out of your way. and I'm going to vote for the other guy. So that's important, because more hatred will only make more heat and confusion in the system. Don't tempt me. I've got enough on the pile already. But do you see what I mean? It's a very important capacity that we have. We don't recognize it very much because we think, like George Bush, if you're not with me, you're against me. And similarly, if you're not fighting against the evil, then therefore you're condoning it, you're going along with it.

[64:50]

But that capacity to not contend is not weakness. It's not passivity. If it becomes like what our friend was saying over there about going numb, then it becomes unhelpful. We're just going emotionally dead, but it's not. It's like, yes, I'm completely aware of what's going on. Yes, this is unwholesome. Yes, I've refused to contend against it, but I'm going to do everything I can to help things go in a different direction. So that it's rather like Aikido. You're using the energy of the... of the person who's aggressing. And you're in as non-contentious a way as possible, contentious way as possible. You're letting things go towards the most beneficial result. Yeah? When you were saying that the Buddha presented no-self not really as a philosophical idea,

[65:57]

not believe. Do you mean that he would have thought that it wasn't really like a philosophical truth, that it was more like a truth of experience? Or do you mean that he would have considered it a philosophical truth but he was just using it mainly as a tool to realize that? Or however you want to respond. Yeah, I think I get what you mean. Well, to begin with, the Buddha never said, at least in our scriptures, he never says, there is no self. And the one time he's asked straight, is there a self? He remains silent. And then the same inquirer says, well, is there no self? He remains silent. And then this guy called Vachagota comes to the Buddha and asks him this. And then Ananda says to him, says to the Buddha after as well, Benevol Sir, because he's always trying to patch things up, you know, dear and under.

[67:02]

And so the Buddha said, well, he said, why didn't you answer him when he asked whether there was a self or no self? And the Buddha replied, well, if I'd said to Vajra Gauta, yes, there is a self, then would that have been in accord with all of the teachings I'd given about all Dhammas being not self? And Ananda said, no, it wouldn't have been. And the Buddha said, well, similarly, if I had said, there is no self, then Vachagata would have had the thought, well, when I came here, I had a self, and now the Lord tells me I haven't got one. So he would have gone away more confused than he ever was when he came. So it was best to remain silent in that. So it might seem like a nitpicking point, but there's a lot of difference between the philosophical position of there is no self, And then the tool of investigating through the idea that there is all dhammas are not self. All phenomena, mental and physical, are not self.

[68:06]

So the latter kind is a means of investigating. So when you have a thought in your mind or you have a memory, is this myself? Does this have an owner? What is it that does the owning? It's a way of exploring. And that... And the suggestion in using that tool is that no matter how hard we look and where we look, that you're never going to find anything that can be defined as a true self. And so it's like a means of recognizing the things that are clung to and identified with and letting go of them. So it's what they call a... in Christian theology, an apophatic method. It's like a way of negation. So the Buddha said, rather than saying, the true self is this, he said, learn to let go of what you're not, and then what is real will become apparent. And because he had this brilliant, he was a genius, that he realized the Dharma is basically, the ultimate truth of things is basically inconceivable and inexpressible.

[69:19]

Therefore, don't try. and so he used both that method of talking a lot about the path to realize it directly and then secondly in this aspect of it learning to see where we get stuck and learning to let go where we get stuck and then once we recognize that and we learn to let go of what we're not we like habitually identify with the body with our feelings, our thoughts, our perceptions, our memories Once those are all seen as being not truly who and what we are, then what remains? The wall. And that is something that can only be a direct realization. It's not an idea, it's not a collection of words, it's a direct apperception of reality, a non-conceptual realization. Does that make sense?

[70:25]

I'm not trying to be abstruse, but do you see the difference between that as a philosophical position to grasp and to argue about and say, this is true. And the Buddha said, there is no self. And this is why, you know, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. It's not just an opinion to defend, but like a tire lever to get that, to change the tire on your truck. Uh-huh, exactly. It's a tool to help carry out that investigation. Yeah? I'm not very comfortable with the idea of opposing Buddhism to faith or Western tradition because of two things, oversimplification we have about the Western-based philosophical plot.

[71:25]

and the profound similarities of spiritual practices, like Judaism, for example, doesn't define God. So the only people who know what that is are Ed-based. And when Abraham gets his first insight about God and about name, he gets an answer, each year, each year. which means I am what I am, as a quality. So I mean, on the level of spiritual practice, it's profoundly similar. Yeah, yeah. I wouldn't... In fact, I make the non-representation of God is something I refer to, both in the Jewish and the Islamic tradition. And in Buddhist tradition also, in the earliest times, they never made Buddha images. that the Buddha was represented as a pair of footprints, or an empty chair, or the space under the Bodhi tree.

[72:33]

And that when the first archaeologists were exploring Buddhist shrines in India, they didn't realize it was all from one individual, one single religion. They thought they were a whole different array of local spirit cults. the chair cult, and the seven-headed serpent cult, and the tree cult, and they couldn't figure out the footprints. And then they began to realize that these were all actually, later on, they realized these were ways that the Buddha was both present, totally present, but totally undefinable. And that's very similar to what you have in the Islamic tradition, and and in Judaic tradition that the divine reality can't be named or depicted. Yes?

[73:37]

The unknown ultimate being. Yeah, I think that's what it was. Well, yeah, people come up with all kinds of different ways of pointing at it. It's like one Dhamma talk my own teacher Ajahn Sumedho gave. He said, you can call it Montague if you wanted to. I don't know where that came from. There you go. Yes? Well, classically, right effort is divided into four pieces. The restraining of the unwholesome from arising,

[74:52]

or if unwholesome has arisen, the unwholesome states have arisen to let go of them, the cultivation of the wholesome, and then the maintaining and being of wholesome states that have already arisen. So that, and that's really the engine of the Eightfold Path, is really that right effort in many ways.

[75:12]

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