Good evening. Good evening. So I first wanted to thank Jordan for inviting me to talk. Thank you, Jordan. And if people were here last year, the people that weren't here, Jordan played a song last week. What was the name of the song again? There is a mountain. First there is a mountain. There is a mountain. First there is a mountain. Then there is no mountain, then there is. And somebody came up after the lecture knowing that I'm an oldster and said, do you know who that singer could have been? And I knew it was Donovan. And it took me back to Athens, Ohio, 1967, where Judith Randall also went to college. We were there for six months together, although I didn't know her. And I remember dancing to that song. under the influence of friendship and narcotics.

[01:03]

And being really happy, you know, really happy. And this has nothing to do with Buddhist training, but it has a lot to do with impermanence. You know, I thought, you know, I'm 18 and will rule the world. There'll be peace. There'll be peace. And this moment will last forever. You know, this moment. These are good friends. I've never seen them again. I've never seen those friends again. And I hadn't heard Donovan in 33 years, thereabouts. So things change, you know, things change wildly. And yet in the particularities, it was a wonderful moment. You know, I still can remember the friendship and the heat of the evening of dancing and the closeness. So that's our life. You know, that's our life of form and emptiness. You know, how do we relate to this this incredible experience where. The most unusual moments happen to us and then something new arises or entices us or frightens us.

[02:08]

How do we relate to this situation? So tonight I'll talk about the Heart Sutra and sort of maybe my slant to the Heart Sutra, what I'd like to talk about in it. And I had some difficulty actually. After Jordan said, OK, you can talk, but you have to at least mention the Heart Sutra. And I thought, well, why not just talk about the Heart Sutra? This is what the practice period is, you know, and just and do it. And I actually gave a course maybe five years ago and several people were in. Tagaku was there in the Heart Sutra. So I had all these books still, you know, and I thought, well, this is I'm set. I've got all these books, you know, I'll just I'll just start reading them in the notes. And then the more I studied, I just I couldn't I just didn't want to get involved or I didn't. I couldn't get into the Heart Sutra in the way I wanted to. You know, I thought I would, you know, unpack and talk about form and emptiness and how the salient feature of form is emptiness, allowing things to become.

[03:14]

That's Geshe Rabton, who I used in the course. And they're wonderful teachers. I think we've all studied them. Thich Nhat Hanh. Kansa's translation and how he relates to the Heart Sutra. And Jordan, I think, has done a great job. It's a very tough topic. It's so beguiling in its simplicity. But once you begin, it can be quite tricky when you begin to work in the realm of trying to understand both the history and the context. So they're wonderful teachers, you know, who have unpacked the the meaning of the Heart Sutra, you know, line by line. And then I thought, you know, but how does it work for us? You know, how does it work? What would I you know, how does it actually work? We we have problems. We have real afflictions and sufferings. And the Heart Sutra is wonderful.

[04:15]

But how do we put it into action? You know, what's the methodology? to actually begin working with this sutra in our daily lives, which is where we meet it, where we actually meet this sutra. So I get more curious about that question. In the Dalai Lama's translation, the Tibetans use the longer version, Geshe Rabton also, where they use this version where The Blessed One was staying in Raja... And we've all chanted this. I guess we've already chanted this several times. In this one, the Blessed One is on Vulture Peak, deeply, deeply immersed in samadhi, which sustains Avalokita to deeply be emerged in samadhi in order to penetrate into this profound situation or this insight into emptiness with the wonderful promise of...

[05:17]

You know, relief from all suffering. So it's it's big in its inception. But, you know, how do we meet every day loss, affliction, anger, fear? So I was thinking, how many people here have known somebody that's died personally? Just out of curiosity. How many people have known somebody personally that's died? So that's almost everybody. And how many people have had great anxiety and fear and distress in the last six months? How about in the last month? How about tonight? So this is a living problem. This is a living problem that we confront daily in our lives.

[06:19]

And it has a great promise in it, relief from suffering, that this will be an antidote or a balm or a way to work with our lives that will relieve this great distress and difficulty we find ourselves in. So I wanted to talk maybe a little about some approaches that I found useful. And I go back to the and of course, you know, I'm going to talk more about the eightfold path. Quite honestly, I don't want to spoil this because sometimes we hear the eightfold path. We go, oh, no, not the eightfold path. But I'd like to I'd like to talk a little about the eightfold path as a way of. a balanced way to actually work with this state, both of affliction and truly seeing into the skandhas themselves. And so some terminology is good here. You know, that first we talk about suffering and pain.

[07:21]

I think Thich Nhat Hanh uses in his version, he says, you will be relieved from all pain. And I kind of lean toward this distinction between suffering and pain. And It seems unlikely. It's not within my experience or what I imagine will happen that I will be free from all pain. Having this body and having this mind, there are difficulties that life brings about, unknown difficulties. Everybody knows somebody that died. And even if we can sort of manipulate many of the particular difficulties, you know, a difficult relationship which we can shore up, But still, at the end, there is this final insurmountable difficulty of death, you know, that we can't. And in a way, because it seats us so completely in our lives that we can't get away from it, we find a way to actually come alive. We begin to work with our life and we can begin this process of a deeper insight into how we're connected to things.

[08:25]

But. So this pain, I think, is not I don't think we can beat that. I really don't think, you know, having this soft tissue body there, it's just prone to dilemmas. And even the joys we feel, you know, sometimes I think, you know, parts of me are kind of falling off sometimes. It's like the knee just stopped three years ago. And I. And I went to the doctor and I said, you know, I don't know if I want to do surgery. I mean, you know, maybe exercise and surgery could cause damage. And he said, well, you know, Mr. Lancaster, you don't understand the damage has happened. It's not about to happen. This is now your knees shot. It doesn't work. So so it's like, oh, yeah, parts parts kind of fall off. So there are these pains and it's painful to go. Ah, you know, I don't remember that. This isn't fair. This isn't fair.

[09:25]

It was just yesterday I was running around, you know, and it was no problem. So, you know, the concept of I want to always be young. There's just the pain. Oh, I have to deal with it. But then the concept of youth and the fear of death and old age, you know, this kind of attachment to something causes this deep suffering, you know, this deep difficulty. in affliction. And this sutra promises that there is a way to go in there to actually work with this situation. This was the sole, I think, the sole quest of this era's Buddha, Shakyamuni. His sole concern was suffering. His sole concern was sentient life and how this could come about and how we could live in this way. You know, in this situation, which is both great delight and great difficulty, you know, mixed together.

[10:26]

So suffering is something we can work with. This is this is a workable situation. The Buddha didn't say dukkha exists and there's just nothing you can do about it. You know, his whole teaching is an invitation to explore this area deeply in our lives as we are. And. The aggregates themselves, the five skandhas, you know, of form, sensation, perception, volition, or samskara, which is a critical juncture point in our psychic life where we individuate ourselves as entities, both on the human realm and also at that juncture point, there's the possibility of a deeper insight into how these things come about and we can wake up to a true relationship to the skandhas. And then the last consciousness or particular types of consciousness in the Nikaya tradition, either super mundane or mundane, depending on how we relate to this exact situation.

[11:33]

The Buddha said all sentient beings have the skandhas. How they relate to the skandhas is their choice. Do they choose suffering or do they choose liberation or freedom? So the skandhas themselves are the earmark or the... A condition of sentient being. Our way out is not to become oblivious. You know, we do have volition. We do make choices. It's how we relate to this very situation of being a sentient being with this conscious, this conscious life that begins to change. how we can relate to suffering for ourselves and others. You know, Quining says, you know, honored followers, just not thinking is no answer. Just not thinking. The only time that occurs is death. This isn't about death.

[12:35]

It's the vitality of life. It's the vitality of making this deep inquiry and exploration. So the Buddha commended this situation to his very followers. and said, you know, monks, wherein is there an own being in these skandhas? I can't discover it. They are not me and I am not it. This is sensation, you know. This is perception. These are natural phenomena that arise and fall away. To make something out of it that isn't there causes, well, all wars, all disturbance, all disease, all afflictions begin with this false understanding. And your job is to stay there completely with the situation, to examine it thoroughly and begin to understand what it really is. Not to be frightened by it, not to be frightened by the falling away of conditioned existence when it happens, but to stay with this thing.

[13:37]

You know, as Bodhisattvas, we say we save all beings, but this fundamental place of not leaving this abiding ground of our own life, of our own inquiry, is saving all beings. This is where we start. This is the area we work in. We're interconnected with all things. So we begin here to make this transformation or this change. When we take the vow to save all beings, We take the vow to be right here in this body as it is and in this mind as we find it. And then to begin to work with it, to begin to make an inquiry not stopped by modesty or anger or fear. We take all of those things on. Those are all mind waves also. We stay there with all of these situations. In fact, I was floundering around so much, I went to the Genjo Koan, which is a fearful place for me.

[14:48]

I think I mentioned that before. The first talk I gave was on the Genjo Koan, and it was such a total disaster. I sort of almost had to go into therapy after that. But Michael, I still remember Michael Winger afterwards, he said it was very... It was very unusual talk. It was like you were opening endless boxes, but we didn't know what was in them. It was very nicely said. The line I come back to in the Genjo Koan, which is also this is a version moved up of 1600 years forward. To study Buddhism is to study the self. Our study is to study the self. And this is with a capital S. It's not just our ideas of you know, how we can get through the day and solve things. That actually reifies a false look at things itself and all of its manifestations. And it's big manifestation in our connection to all things. And to study the self is to forget the self.

[15:49]

But another way is to learn about the self so that it no longer becomes a hindrance or, as Michael wrote on a picture to me, Lancaster getting out of in the way. It doesn't mean Lancaster goes anywhere, you know, but it's just not Lancaster. It's Look at all those faces and all these situations that are possible now. And so to begin to see the nature of the skandhas, their working basis to no longer attach ourselves to anger as Mark's anger, rather than this is anger arising. This is anger that's karmic in nature that goes back in my history, connected with fear. And to stay there right with it is a way to begin to move this solid wall of fear personification or reification or false selfhood. And to begin to open the situation up. You know, when you're you show Blanche's big thing is open your heart, really open everything.

[16:53]

It's the safe way. It scares the hell out of us, you know, because we want to be concealed. But it's actually the safe way. It's the way the way in is the way to be free, the way to be truly free. And saying that, I have a lot of fear. There's still lots of fear. You know, just two weeks ago, I went through a period of a lot of anxiety in my life, fears about the future, fears about the past, just fear. And at times and then you have to sort of go, wow. I hadn't seen you in a long time, old friend. Guess I'll just stay right here with you because, you know, if you run away, the edges get blurry. This is a great trick I learned over the years for me. For me, one insight with form and emptiness is that the more precise I was with form, the more connected I was with form,

[17:57]

the greater the opportunity to really experience emptiness. Any deviation, any holding back becomes a problem. So the closer you come to the actual situation of your life, of opening in that way, then you begin to see the characteristics of emptiness, truly begin to see the characteristics of emptiness. Or as Donovan says, and then a mountain ain't a mountain for the first time. What seems solid is not so solid. Things open up in a different way. This is a deep part of our Zen training that Jordan brought up. This first step of stepping into the particularity of the situation with great precision, great accuracy, so that what is is what is. We're connected directly. It allows us some chance, then, to see its connection with all things.

[18:59]

I actually also like better than emptiness, interconnection, intimacy, aliveness, or the dynamic nature of life, or the impermanent nature of life. From one side, from the clinging aggregates, it's a situation of terror. From letting go, it's a situation of vitality. Quite a fantastic situation to find ourselves in. So... We need to step forward in this very particular way in order to have this experience of not mind or of not thing or of not particularity. And then in the end, as Donovan reminds us, then it's just a mountain again. Although that mountain is no longer what that mountain was in the beginning. It resides on nothing. It's quite a lively mountain now, quite alive. It expresses itself quite nicely on its own, thank you.

[20:01]

It doesn't need us to fix it up. That's the work of a long Zen career. As Daigaku said, it's different. When somebody first comes through the door, they maybe just express themselves, and that could be seen as a kind of freedom. But that same person, after 40 years of solid sitting, expresses themselves. It can be quite different. quite different in how its impact on other people and what's said. So our training is to enter into this practice in this way. And that's all we really do here. This is form an emptiness school. Meditation allows such a broad mind, such a broad, soft, boring mind sometimes that we can see under the things for the first time. We get glimpses of the odd way we intertwine everything for the first time. And there's a space that opens up. A little space begins to open up. We eat Oreo breakfast and we say, now you turn around and you do this.

[21:04]

And we act very particular way. In one way, it's very serious. In one way, it's incredibly funny. Both things back and forth are real about this. So in a way, I was going to talk about how to do this, how to inquire into emptiness. But of course, this is what we do here every day with each other, too. We bump into each other and we tell each other our Buddhist story or our life story. And we get a completely surprising reply that knocks us off balance. Huh. But that's not who I am. That's not my story. Or we have to do something like give a lecture or be chuseau or be douan. It took me four years to be douan here. I had to go to a therapist, actually. I did. My therapist loves it. He goes, oh, wow, you know, that bell, that bell, you guys, you got great images.

[22:09]

You know, how to hit the bell solidly, how to make contact. again, is stepping into your life. Stepping into your life is the possibility of not being turned around always, but turning around things, really relating to things. So we do this every day, but we don't always unpack it in the way the Eightfold Path does. So I wanted to unpack it a little. I think there's some unpacking time. Yeah, we got a little time. So I wanted to unpack because I think, you know, then the Buddha said, well, you know, really, there is a way to do this. You know, there is a way. We're not lost in dukkha and suffering. There's a way to get in there and gain insight in the sea. And he suggested this as a possibility. So I broke them in the traditional grounds of Buddhagosa, you know, in Sri Lanka. It might have been done earlier. The tradition was to divide them into three sections of work, how to work through them. And so the first one.

[23:12]

I call the foundation foundation where. You know, we do our work here and we meditate, we sit, we practice, we wholeheartedly practice together. But, you know, to build this insight, to build this ability to work in this realm, we need a foundation, a ground that we can work on. And it's been traditionally suggested that how we speak to each other, how we act, and how we work together. You know, what work we undertake are vital to creating a healthy, wholesome foundation. It's a foundation where it's called wholesome foundation, you know. So we build, we practice in this way. And it's very subtle, you know. You know, it's very easy and hard to work with because so much of the society is built on maybe not being so wholesome. You know, many things are really funny and they completely undermine this state.

[24:17]

They totally undermine this state of a wholesome, soft and open quality that human beings can build up with each other. So it takes some work, you know, because we don't live in a place that really wants people to take care of themselves and each other always in a good way. So right speech is really critical. You know, I think the Buddha, when he said it's really important, is it necessary to say this? Is it kind? Is it useful? Is it appropriate? Really pay attention to how you speak. You may have great insights. And there have been people, I've met people, have brilliant insights, but maybe this isn't so developed and it wears away at the level of insight. It actually causes confusion. So this is a working basis to sustain your insight. We all kind of want a blinding Kensho that will lift us right out of here. I think so. Does everybody want a blinding Kensho? Oh, and that's a maybe not.

[25:19]

I wanted a blinding Kensho for a long time. And I've had some, you know, sharp experiences. But so what? You know, you still have to go to work and you still have to treat people well. You know, you have to you have to actually do this. This is this is actually something you do with each other every day. You know, so we need to pay attention to that, you know, both. in our working basis for gaining insight into the skandhas, into emptiness itself. And because the world needs it. I don't know if you've ever had that experience. I've seen that, you know, where you say something about somebody and it sticks in your mind. It's like a murky spot when you meet the person. You know, it's very treacherous, you know, very treacherous ground. It actually conditions how the mind, mind body responds to things. It closes opportunities down. So we want to open all these opportunities up for each other with a kindness of speech, a useful speech.

[26:20]

And kind speech isn't like, you know, I used to do a lot of that, you know, I want everybody to be happy. I want to be happy. That's not kind speech. Kind speech is to be direct and fair sometimes with people and very honest. And then stay there with them. That's the big thing. And stay there with them. You know, don't lob a mortar shell. over there, you know, and then check out. So we're connected. We've taken a vow together to be sangha. We stay together. And action, it's pretty clear how these would develop every day, you know. Don't, you know, you know, sometimes I see something and I think, oh, I'll just borrow this or I'll use it for a while. Then I think somebody will work, leave a note. It's Mark and I wanted to use this or check with somebody. Very simple things, you know, we can do. Here, a great, great action we can undertake is boundaries with each other in our temple. You know, I'm a bad one, too. I see the Tenzo and I go, oh, I just want to tell you something about lunch, even though you're talking with your mother and you're getting to the car, you know.

[27:32]

So we might be aware of that kind of action with each other. What's the Tenzo doing? Would the Tenzo like to be told I didn't enjoy lunch just at this moment? Could I just wait? Could I do it another way, you know, at a more appropriate time than in front of his mother? Or the work leader, you know? My first day as work leader, my first one day sitting, I still remember somebody came up to me in the Soji line. And we're hurrying to get down because before Jordan wisely got rid of the soji on Monday sittings, we had like eight and a half. We actually had 15 minutes on the calendar, but it was only like six in reality. So somebody came up and they said, there's something horrible in the toilet. Can you check? This is not a good moment. When there were 40 people behind, you know. It's just amazing. So you might want to check in the whole environment. This is just also form the particularity.

[28:34]

But what's the situation? You know, what's what's useful in this moment? You know, so so we can work with that here. I think it would be very good. You know how to help each other, you know, how to help each other, both working for Zen Center and Insomnia to support each other. Livelihood becomes so tricky because, you know, those are specific injunctions laid down. But the general one is to do no harm. With what you do, do no harm. And all of these things are interactive. You have to make the inquiry. You have to pay attention. So again, one moment kind speech with one person is actually wrong speech. You should speak strongly with this person. With this person, this will be totally useless to speak to them. The same thing with livelihood. You have to check it out. How does it work? Is it useful in your practice? Is it useful in the world? Does it do harm? to check these things out fairly and fairly means on all sides, not just adopting a rigid point of view.

[29:35]

So the second. So, you know, I wrote here sensual realm, leave the sensual realm behind. Who knows what that means? Don't fool around, you know, your mind. You know what your mind is and you fool around. You know, people want to have some wild fantasy. They want to drink. They want to get, you know, this thing takes a certain amount of endeavor and work. You know, this mind body leaks all over in the society is more than happy to entice you into wild and foolish ways. And I'm not saying you should sit here, you know. just have no connection out there. That's not useful. That's not what we do. That's not our life. But you really pay attention to what you put in here, because that's what we'll reap. That really is what's going to come up someday.

[30:39]

Usually for me, it's just the wrong moment, actually. And it makes it very hard if we dwell in the realm of... Now, this is not just sexual fantasy or drug, but just of kind of sort of... just being a little out of control with things, not paying attention to a sense of propriety in what we're trying to do. You can't do it all. It'd be great if we could sort of be enlightened and then just dance all night and get crazy. I mean, a little bit we want that. That's also one of the areas, I think, that we think the opposite of suffering is our kind of sensual wildness. We're going to have a ball, too. We'd love to have it all, but I don't think you can do it. You've got to give up. There is some letting go. You can actually kind of get overwhelmed and confuse yourself. There is some letting go, some boundary that you need, some container you need to build around yourself. I don't know. I still have high hopes.

[31:40]

I'll get to maybe some point, and then I can go back out and go wild. Not really. I've given that up. It doesn't work that way. It's not a good model for other people either, by the way. To act foolishly in this way. And because we're going to run low on time, this is going to be the Buddha gave this lecture at Benares and it took probably several hours. I'm going to do it in 14 minutes. But we've had 2,500 years in training here to prepare. So out of foundation or this wholesome foundation, the next is I wrote down deepening and sticking. You know, the mind needs work. You know, the everyday mind is very active and things don't. We need a juicy mind. We need to develop a certain type of mind to work in this Dharma realm to gain insight into suffering. So we need first, you know, traditionally we talked about used to talk about shamatha or tranquility or stopping and observing, you know, a slowness or.

[32:51]

Friendliness with our own situation has to be developed in order to begin to make this mind even receptive to this deep inquiry or used to be called Vipassana. We don't separate them and we say just sit because really your mind gets juicy if you just sit. It works its way through boredom. It works its way through all of its attempts to get out, to figure a way out. And then it gets softer. So we need to develop this softness of mind. And I think, you know, we're really critical people. I don't know. We're really pretty critical people in America. Very harsh with ourselves. You know, we feel like we've got to be tough, you know. And I don't think that mind's so useful for this practice. You know, we should be fair with ourselves. We should develop an open and generous spirit for this inquiry we're making. We need to prepare the ground so that when we begin this inquiry, looking into the skandhas, looking into what is, as the Buddha says, our mind isn't wandering around.

[34:01]

And in fact, if it is wandering around, endlessly manipulating and reifying itself, we can be kind of going in the wrong direction. We can waste our time on the cushion when we sit. So it's important to let go and to open up in a very soft, broad way when we sit. Body is great for this. Body really has no agenda when you sit, you know, to really soften and work with your mood, posture and breath. To let moments and thoughts come and go with generosity. To be softer with ourselves, more generous with ourselves, I think is really an important, important quality. It allows us to begin to stop. to begin to see things. So could you all give yourself an extra dose of kindness tomorrow when you sit in the morning? Kindness isn't being self-indulgent.

[35:02]

You're being soft and kind in order to wake up. It's to lay the groundwork for truly doing this work, which is not easy. It can be frightening to take on our lives in this way. So you really need extra kindness. for yourselves and each other. Metta is loving kindness. Brahma-viharas often are used in shamatha practice because they can't be grasped the way insight meditation can be. So to practice with great loving kindness or sometimes like just personal friendliness, just hang out with yourself, worry about your warts and imperfections. They're quite wonderful. They're quite wonderful things to work with. And then when you can be friendly, you can be compassionate and not move away. And then equanimity or true balance can start to surface.

[36:08]

And then you can stay with the subject. Over and over, your mind can come back to what's really happening. No story time now, what's really happening in your anger, in your fear. And then the last part in the Eightfold Path is waking up day. Wisdom or Prajna. So we lay this groundwork for this situation of beginning to see We don't have to see the whole known universe. We have six sense gates. We have five heaps of perceptual matter that we're endlessly manipulating, working and we're stuck in. And that sometimes we get free of. That's where we work. That's the Dharma. That's the connection with all life right here. So we begin to work in a very intimate way with this softer mind to see what this is really made out of.

[37:16]

Not with our story time, even our Buddhist story time of floating away and loving everybody and never being heard or having difficulties. But, you know, a deep insight through our own hearts and our own situation, because we can bear it now because we've been soft or generous with ourselves. In the traditional way of saying this is right view or right intention that. Now there's a purification or an insight into the true nature of the skandhas, into the true nature of the situation that we don't cling to them in a way that's crazy making that causes this great suffering. That's seeing emptiness in form. Then at that point, then things are quite wondrous. We're enlightened by the 10,000 things. We don't have to figure it out. They actually express themselves. And we pick up what we need, and we're deeply grateful, and we put it down when we don't need it, because it rests in emptiness.

[38:23]

It was always a gift. You never owned it. You could never figure it out. You couldn't deserve it. It's a total gift, moment by moment. So... I'll just finish by reading just one short thing. This is also to show off Mary Major's bookmark what she gave me. This is Suzuki Roshi. I'll just end with this. Without nothingness, there is no naturalness, no true being. True being comes out of nothingness, moment after moment. Nothingness is always there, and from it, everything appears. But usually, forgetting all about nothingness, you behave as if you have something. What you do is based on some possessive idea or some concrete idea, and that is not natural.

[39:26]

For instance, when you listen to a lecture, you should not have any idea of yourself. You should not have your own idea when you listen to someone. Forget what you have in your mind and just listen to what he or she says. To have nothing in your mind is naturalness. Then you will understand. But if you have some idea to compare with what this person says, you will not hear everything. Your understanding will be one-sided. And that's not natural. When you do something, you should be completely involved in it. You should devote yourself to it completely. Then you have nothing. So if there's no true emptiness in your activity... Really it's not natural. So thank you.

[40:22]

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