This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I wonder if it would be true if I would say that I'm working on to become free of egocentric consciousness or free with or free in egocentric consciousness. It does sound like a good idea to me to become free of egocentric consciousness.

[01:10]

But again, free... Yeah. Free with, free in, free from. Anyway, free. Free in relationship to egocentric consciousness. There's the thought that egocentric consciousness is where suffering and the causes of suffering are cycling around. Someone told me recently that he heard me say, say no to evil. I don't know if I said that. If saying no to evil would help become free of evil and the suffering that evil lives with, maybe I would be willing to say, say no.

[02:28]

But I don't know if saying no to evil is appropriate to the work of becoming free of evil. suffering and its cause evil. Someone might say self-clinging is an evil because it causes suffering. Now I'm feeling more like it might be conducive to becoming free to... fully accept evil and the suffering that lives with it. Be friends with evil. I'm more feeling like that might be appropriate to the work of becoming free of ego-clinging consciousness.

[03:36]

Another opportunity in this kind of work, or in this kind of work, I think there's an opportunity to learn to discriminate between pain, painful sensations, and suffering. There can be suffering with painful sensations, and there can be suffering with pleasant sensations, and there can be suffering with neutral sensations. To feel pain when our body is touched by cold, to feel pain when our body is touched by heat, that doesn't seem evil to me.

[04:46]

That just seems like painful sensation. And maybe helpful sensation. But the impulse to avoid the pain might be evil. The hating the pain might be evil. Not always. Sometimes it helps to withdraw from cold or heat. More likely, the habit of always withdrawing from pain and pleasure and clinging to pleasure. That might be more a candidate for promoting

[05:48]

being trapped in egocentric consciousness. And as the weather gets cold and then gets warm and gets cold, people may have sensations of pain and pleasure coming up in them and then again have feelings of attraction and aversion coming up. And it may be difficult for us sometimes to tell the difference between the pain and the aversion. But I think it might be helpful to look at the pain and see if there's aversion and see that there's a difference between pain and aversion to it. Or pain and tensing up. Or pain and... Yeah.

[06:53]

Pain and some emotional reaction. The association could be, in a sense, analyzed into the sensation and the emotional response. And then open to the possibility to feel pain... and maybe not feel aversion. Just feel pain. And to feel pleasure and not feel emotionally attached to it or emotionally activated by it. This might be a helpful thing for us to do on an ongoing basis. And I think, actually, it is happening around cold, and it usually happens around cold during Tazahar practice periods, that... When the pain of cold comes at first, there may be this aversion to it, and then there may be gradually the pain coming and not aversion to it.

[07:58]

And just pain, pain, pain of cold, pain of cold, and no aversion, just pain. and then pleasure, and then pain. It seems related to becoming free with egocentric consciousness because the pain might be appearing in egocentric consciousness and to be able to see the pain and the emotional reaction and see them as two different phenomena, and realize the second one doesn't always have to be there and in fact sometimes it isn't and that sometimes that feels really like a different life a life of pain pleasure heat cold heat cold and I can't tell I can't tell if it's hot or cold and it's hot and it's cold and I can't tell a life like that

[09:14]

with feelings but no habitual emotional reaction that go that can go on in the place where there's an ego and that kind of act that kind of way of life might be related to becoming free in this consciousness or with this consciousness or of this consciousness same with physical like tactile sensations of pain in the body aside from pain and cold maybe bone pain or muscle pain or organ pain all these pains may be possible to by repeated practice to see internal bodily pain aversion internally body pain aversion internally body pain Or internally body pain, aversion, and completely friendly to the aversion and to the body pain.

[10:32]

It seems like some of the people in the Sangha are experiencing pain and realizing some freedom from aversion to it. It just seems to be happening as we settle into our place. So again, settling into our place in the center of suffering, there's all these flames around us. And... They're painful and pleasureful. There's flames of pleasant sensation, too. And then there's flames of greed for that. And then there's flames of thought of getting pleasant sensations. These are part of the flames. And then all these flames, and how can we, like, settle with them? stories I've been telling about face-to-face transmission the last two stories I told ended something like and the student realized the unborn and then the next one and the student realized the unborn original nature

[12:39]

Now, again, we're going to have a story of the student realizing or awakening to the principle of the unborn. Are you going like this? Is that involuntary? I'm still trying to figure out what the unborn is. You're trying to figure it out? Yeah, so we're telling stories about people who woke up to it. Someone might say, before they woke up, they were just like you. So these themes are running through the stories. Themes of the home lever and now themes of realizing the unborn.

[13:45]

The unborn Buddha mind. Because Buddha mind is unborn and unceasing doesn't arise or cease and for sure it's the unborn so the next story is about the yes seventh ancestor and his name is something like Buddha Nandi And it might be good to tell you beforehand that he was a very eloquent debater. Echoing back to the story about Ananda and Mahakashapa. And at the end...

[14:49]

Mahakashapa says, take down the flag. In other words, there's no debate, or the debate's over. Ananda didn't say that he wanted to debate Mahakashapa, but anyway, Mahakashapa says, the debate's over. There's no debate. Take the flag down. Now we have somebody who's said to be a debater, and the debater, Buddha Nandi, to meet Vasumitra and says teacher master Vasumitra I am here now to debate the truth with you and Vasu Mitra says, good, kind, sir.

[16:00]

If there is debate, it is not the truth. The truth is not a matter of debate. If you wish to or if you propose or intend to debate, in the end, it will not be the truth that is debated. I confess that this particular response by the teacher to the student is very difficult for me to stay centered with. It seems to me to be very dynamic and pivoting. So, yeah, so, you may not have got that very well, but maybe you did. Once again, teacher, I've come to debate truth.

[17:17]

Teacher says, good, kind sir. If it's debate, it's not the truth the truth is not a matter of debate if you intend to debate then in the end it may not be the truth that's being debated and Buddha Nandi woke up to the principle of the unborn. It may be the case that waking up to the principle of the unborn is an expression indicating how we become free

[18:24]

of egoistic consciousness. Realizing the unborn Buddha mind, the egoistic consciousness is liberated. When the egoistic consciousness is liberated, we realize the unborn. The unborn is realized. listen to this conversation, it sounds a little bit like, well, first of all, the monk, Buddha Nandi, the debater saying, I want to debate the truth with you, and the rest of the story, the rest of the talk is the teacher. There's not much back and forth. Just student offers, student calls, teacher has this intense logical response, and the student wakes up. If there's debate, it's not the truth.

[19:31]

The truth is not debated. When I hear that first, I think maybe he's saying, you know, you can't debate the truth. Yeah, he's kind of saying that. You want to debate the truth? Well, you can't debate the truth. The truth is not something to debate. Well, what should we debate then? Are you prohibiting debate? Maybe, actually, this was a debate between Buddha Nandi and Vasumitra. Buddha Nandi says, I want to debate. And Vasumitra says, I'm not going to debate the truth with you. But I will debate with you. But I'm not going to debate the truth. Truth is not something to debate. But I'll debate you and I'm debating you right now. And then the excellent debater, the student, realizes that the teacher has won the debate.

[20:38]

And when he realizes the teacher has won the debate, he realized the unborn. I want to debate the truth with you, teacher said. Basically, the truth is not something to debate. That's my debate response. Maybe you could give up debating the truth and debate something else with me. Like this. Maybe this could be the debate. It's that you say you want to debate the truth, and I say the truth is not something to be debated, and you wake up. Was the unborn just realized? Maybe if... If Buddha Nanja came and said, I want to debate... falseness.

[21:52]

I want to debate falsehood. Maybe Mbatsu Mitra would have said, okay, let's debate it. That's... Perfectly good thing to debate. Yeah, what you just did was really false. You spoke falsely just now. And then, put it on, you say, how? And he said, well, you said, I want to debate. And so on. I'm up for debating falseness. But I don't want to debate the truth. But I do want you to wake up to the unborn. Please. do so. And he did. Yeah, it's possible that at that point of checkmate, you open to the unborn.

[22:55]

The only way, it may be the case that the only way to become free of egoistic consciousness is through conversation with the other. Here's a story about one of our ancestors. became free with another ancestor who became free by conversation with another who became free by conversation with the other There seems to be stories circulating in the world of somebody sitting by herself and becoming free of egoistic consciousness without being in conversation with another.

[24:15]

But I don't know. Are there any stories like that? Do anybody know stories like that? Of somebody who just woke up that wasn't in a conversation. somebody, some person, woke up and became free of the personal life and the impersonal life, who became free without that happening in conversation. People think that that's the story of Buddha, that the Buddha was sitting under the Bodhi tree and became free, but not in the middle of a conversation. Now, once he was free, he started having conversations. But at the moment of becoming free, was he in a conversation? Was it a conversation when he looked at the morning star and woke up?

[25:27]

Was that a conversation with another? I've heard that Buddha did become free of egoistic consciousness, but not by destroying it. It seems to me that he became free of egoistic consciousness through conversation. And again, now we have the story of the sixth and seventh Indian ancestor, having a debate, having a conversation which starts up by the student saying I want to have a conversation with you and the teacher saying having a conversation the way you want to have a conversation is not something to have a conversation about and the student sees the merit in that and wakes up from his egoistic entrapment

[26:39]

confess to you that when I started studying this story I I think I felt some egoistic entrapment but then I had a conversation and the conversation was with you and now I feel more free of egoistic entrapment thank you very much for the conversation Maybe I'll go now. Is that okay? Thanks a lot, by the way. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit SSCC.org. and click giving.

[27:57]

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