This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening, everyone. Can you all hear me in the back and everything? Okay, good. So first of all, is there anybody here for the first time tonight who's never been to a talk at Zen Center before? One, two... Oh, good. Welcome. Welcome, everybody. So... My name is Jeffrey Schneider, and I'm a priest here, and I'm going to be giving a little talk tonight. So if you get something out of it, that will make me very happy. And if you don't, please come back and hear somebody else talk. So first of all, I want to say thank you to Rosalie, Rosalie Curtis Artanto, the head of practice, for inviting me to speak tonight. It's always a great honor to be invited to speak here in the Buddha Hall. I sort of took my cue for tonight's subject from Rosalie.

[01:05]

Rosalie's going to be leading the upcoming practice period that begins in, is it early May? Early May, yeah. And the title or the theme, if you will, of the practice period is going to be right intention. So as some of you know, perhaps most of you, right intention is listed first, I'm sorry, listed second in in the so-called Noble Eightfold Path, right? So the Noble Eightfold Path, as it goes, is right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. And if you don't know about this and you want to know more about this, I happen to be teaching a class on Introduction to Buddhism, and it's going to start early in May, so... Yeah, you can get the basics there. But in general, so tonight I thought, well, since right view is actually the first listed, and the practice period is about right intention, it might be interesting to talk a little bit about right view tonight.

[02:13]

So that's what I'm going to attempt to do, and we'll see how far we go, how far it gets us. So in general, any kind of view is a sort of... It's sort of like our operating instructions for negotiating the world and negotiating our lives. You know, whether our point of view is articulated or whether it's not articulated in just sort of something that we operate on without examining very carefully, we still all have a point of view. So, you know, do you basically feel that the world is a safe place? Or is it an unsafe place? Do you feel that people are to be mostly trusted or that they should be met with suspicion and you have to protect yourselves at all times? Do you feel that you are a worthy person or an unworthy person? Is your thinking normally optimistic or is it catastrophic? These are all sort of points of view that we may not even be aware that we hold if we don't examine them intentionally.

[03:21]

And we have also points of view that are sort of bequeathed to us from our culture. Whether we know it or not, many people have shaped our points of view. Just within the past century or so, whether you know it or not, your worldview is very strongly shaped by Darwin, Freud, Einstein, right? And further back, you may never have read anything about Socrates or not even quite sure who St. Augustine was but I guarantee you your worldview is to some degree shaped by those individuals who lived so many centuries ago. So we all have a view, a point of view, a worldview. And the Buddhist teaching then starts off with the idea that what we are looking for is right view. And it's fairly specific. So when we talk about right, what we're talking about is... It's kind of a dicey translation.

[04:25]

It means something more like complete or perfected. Somebody who knew about the languages of the Buddhist scriptures once told me that the word sam, and so the Pali language term for right view is samaditi, samaditi. which I'm probably mispronouncing. But anyhow, this person told me that the psalm is a suffix, prefix rather, which is an intensifier. So the intensification of view is right view because it is perfected. It is complete. And in early Buddhist teaching particularly, right view is pretty specific. And the Eightfold Path, which I just mentioned, is divided. One way of looking at it is that it's divided into the three trainings.

[05:26]

So right view and right intention are under the heading of wisdom. Some of the others are under ethical conduct, and the last two are under meditation. These are the three trainings. So the question may arise is how can we have something like right view at the beginning of our practice? because according to Buddhism, right view, a correct understanding of the world, ourselves, how the world works, how we ourselves work, the arising, the continuation, and the ending of suffering is what is liberating, and that is the right view, to have the right view of these things. So it's also at the end of the path, because right view is the liberation. that is achieved at the end of the path, the path of the arhat. And in Buddhism, it is knowledge, a correct view that actually ultimately is salvific, that offers us liberation.

[06:31]

So the traditional understanding is that right view comes in two sorts, right? Mundane and supermundane. So at the beginning and the end, if you like. So mundane is to have a good understanding of cause and effect, or in Buddhist terms, what we call karma, volitional activity. In other words, you know, as ye sow, so shall ye reap. So the idea that we are somehow free are not subject to cause and effect, that we can do stuff and it doesn't have consequences, that we can get away with anything, is wrong view. Right view is that every volitional activity, whether of body, speech, or mind, has cause and effect. And we can use this understanding, this knowledge, to sort of benefit our lives. Right?

[07:33]

To benefit our lives. To quote the Dhammapada, which is a very early and much-loved, beautiful and frequently translated Buddhist text, At the very beginning of the Dhammapada, it says, speak or act with a corrupted mind and suffering follows as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. Speak or act with a peaceful mind and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow. So on one hand, it's pretty easy to see. You know, like if we try to live our lives in, you know, ways that minimize suffering that are beneficial to ourselves, to our others, if we avoid activities that have obvious bad outcomes, then we have a better chance of being happier lives on a mundane level, right? But on the other hand, bad things do happen to good people. And good things do happen to those we don't think so highly of.

[08:41]

So a traditional understanding of this, in Buddhist terms, is rebirth. If it don't get you this time, it'll get you next time. That the consequences of our actions continue beyond a single life. Now, you may choose to believe this, or you may choose not to believe this, or you may choose to keep it an open question. For me, I frame the idea of rebirth as the question of where does the self begin and where does the self end? You know, where can we say we start? Where can we say we finish? And where does this continuity of activity flow, right? You know, we inherit not only point of view, but I think we also inherit the karma of our parents, our grandparents, our cultures, our people, our species, you know. So you can choose to look in this any way you like. this rebirth thing.

[09:43]

And if you're completely opposed to the whole rebirth thing, that's cool too. So my point of that is that while bad things may happen to good people, a person who has cultivated the good within him or herself is more likely to be able to bear ill fortune with an untroubled mind and also more likely to have people in his or her life who are willing to be there for the bad times, for the times of ill fortune. And creating a mindset, a point of view, a personality that is based on the three traditional poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion is in itself suffering, regardless of outward circumstances. You know, you may be a very rich person, very successful in the world, And yet, you know, you may constantly worry that you'll lose that, what you've got, or that people only want to be around you for your money, or that there's never enough, never enough, never enough fame, never enough adulation, never enough cars, never enough, you know, whatever it is.

[11:01]

You know, that in itself is suffering regardless of what it looks like on the outside. So whether you choose to believe in some sort of rebirth or not, I think we can see the mundane actions of karma in our life. So this is still considered a mundane understanding of cause and effect, and in itself it is not a specifically Buddhist understanding. I think you can talk to anybody, either any or no faith tradition, and put this to them, and they would more or less probably agree. But supermundane right view is somewhat different. It's what comes at the end of the path, at liberation. And supermundane right view is understood as something like an embodiment of the Four Noble Truths. Not knowing like this, because many of us can sort of rattle them off, but knowing the Four Noble Truths in our bodies and on our minds is

[12:05]

the way that we know that when we put a hand in the flame, it's going to be hot. When we put a hand on ice, it's going to be cold. That kind of knowing, that deep, deep knowing. And the four noble truths, of course, are the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the ending of suffering, and the way to the ending of suffering, which, of course, is the noble eightfold path. So this is an experiential understanding that leads to liberation from the entirety of worldly good and evil to nirvana, to the goal. So that sounds all very nice, but how do we get there? How can you get there from here? Even to the first limited understanding, Well, I suppose we could say that the best way is to take it on faith at the beginning.

[13:10]

But I'd like to read something. It's quite famous. Many of you will have heard it before. It's a portion of what is called the Kalama Sutta. So the Kalamas were a clan of people who lived in a place when the Buddha lived, which was much like the Bay Area. You couldn't throw a stone or swing a cat without hitting another guru. And they all said something different, right? So the Buddha, who is a sort of peripatetic teacher, arrives in town. And, you know, the Kalama folks come and say, listen, you know, you seem like a nice guy and everything. But, you know, so-and-so was here last week and so-and-so was here the week before and so-and-so. And they all say different things. They're all sort of like, you know, dissing each other. And, you know, how do we, you know, like, why should we believe you? Why should we believe anybody? How do you know, right? So the Buddha... said, so in this case, Kalamas, don't go by reports, by legends, by traditions, by scripture, by logical conjecture, by inference, by analogies, by agreement through pondering views, by probability, or by the thought this contemplative is our teacher.

[14:29]

When you know for yourselves that that these qualities are unskillful. These qualities are blameworthy. These qualities are criticized by the wise. When adopted and carried out lead to harm and suffering, then you should abandon them. So here, the Buddha suggests that we know for ourselves through a very careful examination of our own experience, what works and what does not work. to see how our behavior has consequences. And to learn, as in the first noble truth, that craving... No, second noble truth, sorry. Craving does not lead to suffering. Craving is suffering, okay? Craving is suffering. And so all of Buddha's teaching comes down to what we can ultimately, if not immediately,

[15:31]

experience and judge for ourselves. So in a sense, to begin a practice with this view involves a deliberate setting up of a point of view and acting upon it and observing the outcomes. Sort of an experiment, right? In which we are the scientist, we are the laboratory, we are the experiment, and we are the outcome. And it's always available to be adjusted to conform with reality, with observable and repeatable reality. So this is a traditional understanding from early Buddhism of right view. And I think that the understanding of what right view is changes to some degree with the advent of the Mahayana, Does anybody not know what the Mahayana is? Don't be shy, raise your hands.

[16:32]

Okay, good. Okay, so the Mahayana is a sort of stream of Buddhism that arose around 100 years before the Common Era, and it emphasized different things. It emphasized the teachings of compassion, Specifically, the idea that the goal is not a final liberation for oneself, but to remain in the world, to be of service to others. There were a lot of different things that it did. But it was a new strain of understanding. And that's a very short... You shall come to my class if you didn't. Did I mention it started in early May? It's called Introduction to Basic Buddhist Thought. So let's consider these two quotes. So once again, this is from the Dhammapada, the one that I quoted earlier, the very early Buddhist scripture.

[17:37]

Not to do evil, but to do all that is good and to purify the mind. Such is the teaching of all the Buddhists. Not to do evil, but to do all that is good and to purify the mind. That sounds pretty good. If we could do that, I'd be happy. There's a variation of this, however, that we use in our ordination ceremony here when people take the precepts. And it goes like this. I vow to refrain from all evil. I vow to live in awakening. And I vow to live and be lived forever. for the benefit of all beings. Let me read those two again, and you'll see how they differ. Not to do evil, but to do all that is good and to purify the mind. I vow to refrain from all evil. I vow to live in awakening. I vow to live and be lived for the benefit of all beings. So the second one, of course, is based on the first and is also an expression of right view, but with a somewhat different slant.

[18:46]

The first, you know, expresses the traditional view, both mundane and super mundane. And the second is kind of a radical reevaluation of right view, expressing itself from the point of view of the absolute, as though the person reciting these vows, as though I were already awakened, already liberated from greed, hate, and especially delusion. So this is pretty heady stuff. You know, it is. And it reminds me a little bit of these lines from Nagarjuna, who was a second century Buddhist teacher and sort of the foundation of all Mahayana Buddhist philosophy. In his treatise on the root of the middle way, the Mulamajamaka Karaka, he writes, samsara, which is this world of suffering, our daily experienced world, samsara does not have the slightest distinction from nirvana.

[19:48]

Nirvana does not have the slightest distinction from samsara. Whatever is the end of nirvana, that is the end of samsara. There is not even a very subtle, slight distinction between the two. So in this understanding, right view is to see our lives as already awakened and liberated. and to proceed from there, as though we did not need to be improved upon. Many of you are familiar with the sort of famous story of Suzuki Roshi, the founder of this temple, who once said to one of his students, or many of his students perhaps, you are all perfect just the way you are, and you could all use a little bit of improvement. A monk asked Yun-men, what is the work of an entire lifetime?

[20:50]

Yun-men replied, an appropriate response. The early 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein said, of that which one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent. So my own view on views is that all of our views are partial, temporary, seen through the frame of our personal history, culture, physical limitations. I see the world quite differently than a bee does or a dog does. I believe it's in Dogen someplace, he says that water is a home to fish, a drink to humans, a palace for gods, and boiling lava for hungry ghosts. So I further believe that right view, real right view, is never to rest from questioning our view, from asking further.

[22:05]

We can adopt the traditional versions, both mundane and super mundane, because for the most part they do work. And we can adopt the absolute view and that it corrects the limitations of cause and effect and provides us with a noble aspiration. But finally, I don't think that there's any place to rest. And that is really all I wanted to say. There is a little bit of time, a few minutes, yes? Let's see if anybody else would like to ask a question or say something or clarify or disagree. Disagrees, I like disagreements. Yes. I was actually thinking on the way here about, I guess, the duality that you were talking about in things that I've experienced in my daily life, like what my struggles are.

[23:15]

You know, the things that I thought like sitting on a daily basis would fix. It didn't fix that, but what it did is really like an alternate perspective of my struggles, like struggling with sitting on a daily basis, and yet doing it. Anyhow, to have maybe that long experience that I'm really needing to move forward, or I deal a lot with anger or negativity bias and through mindfulness when I actually confront those things rather than trying to be perfect and still need improvement and that is where I grow the most is through my negative struggles or what I perceive to be negative are just as valuable to me now as the joyful experience.

[24:31]

And even though I was late, I was really interested to hear what I was experiencing today. Well, I think what he meant And Nagarjuna, for those of you who may not be familiar with him, is sort of famously difficult. I think what he meant by that is neither nirvana nor samsara have own being. They're equally empty of own being. They cannot be grasped.

[25:32]

They cannot be... independently removed from everything else. They do not stand on their own side. And so, you know, to cultivate the understanding of emptiness in difficulty I think is very, very, very, very useful. I remember years ago, before I came to Zen Center, I happened to be working at a daycare center. And, you know, the kids were young, and they were, you know, they were basically pretty cool kids. But, you know, kids get into fracases, frac-eye, whatever. And so I was standing on one side of the room, and I was watching these two kids get into it. And my first impression was like I was going to go and sort of pull them apart and, you know, make it all nice. And I just stopped for a moment. I thought, you know, it's just color and form. And, of course, that was true.

[26:35]

But only, you know, I mean, there's also two little kids. But I noticed that when I didn't do anything, it resolved, and they just went their own ways. And so to have to take the step back, the backward step, and to have some distance, it's kind of hard to do, but I think that we learn to do it in meditation to some extent, because when we sit, we take a backward step from our own emotions, our own thoughts, even while they're there, the process of observing them objectifies them to some extent that we become less, we believe them less deeply. Is that your experience? Yeah, and I think it just takes doing it over and over again. I mean, you know, there's lots of little practices, sometimes, you know, like, Sometimes throughout the day I'll just go through the day reciting, you know, the refuges under my breath.

[27:41]

Or if I'm really pissed off, I'll do loving-kindness meditation. Or one I find really lucky, fun to do, is gratitude meditation. Or just returning to the breath, you know, again and again to try and calm the mind a little bit. And to be able to see that color and form is just color and form. I don't know if that's helpful at all. You know, I've really talked to you about your work going down to the soup kitchen. You know, but I know that you do that. And, you know, you just organize this Easter dinner, and I think you've been working with the prison program. for years. And doing services for people who have passed away anonymously, who have been homeless.

[28:43]

I guess I'm sort of just wondering if you can speak to the experience of confronting that really intense suffering And it's sort of the same question in a way, really, as what Kim just asked. But I'm sort of wondering if you could sort of maybe speak to that experience in the context of what you're teaching now and how those things inform each other, really. So on Monday, I went into the jail, men's jail. And we started doing a gig, a weekly gig, if you like, in the psych unit of the men's jail. And every time I've gone to jail, I have come away with this sense of incredible sweetness. Because here are these guys.

[29:43]

We also go into the women's jail, but I go into the men's. So here are these guys, and they have nothing, but they're so pleased that somebody is there. And hopefully we can give them, like, I don't know if they get anything out of what we tell them. You know, we give them, like, some ideas about how to meditate and how to stretch and how to relieve a little bit of stress. But the interaction is, you know, I don't feel, I mean, I know that the suffering is there because that's why we go there. But that's not what I feel. You know, I feel... How did you feel, Tova, this morning? Tova's when was this to serve breakfast? Yes, I felt very connected. About eight of us went and prepared breakfast at St. Bonfist Church for homeless people, maybe 50-55 people.

[30:48]

I felt so happy after that, that it could be part of offering such a good nourishing breakfast to people who really needed it, and yeah, a lot of gratitude. So I think sometimes we go, you know, we're afraid to go where there's suffering, but in fact what we find It's this deep sweetness, this deep heart connection. And so it can be scary at first, but as we were sitting there Monday, somebody in one of the rooms that we couldn't see was screaming. And I don't know whether he was in great pain or he was just being obstreperous.

[31:49]

But whenever you hear somebody scream, you can sit here. Whenever you hear the sound of a siren, you hear the sound of human suffering, right? So if we go outside and we turn to the right, there's the statue of Avalokiteshvara who hears the sounds of the world, the cries of the world. And the story about Avalokiteshvara is that the Buddha sent... of Lakiteshvara, into hell to preach the Dharma. And he was so overcome, or she, that his head exploded. And so he took the little pieces back to the Buddha, which is kind of an odd picture. And so the Buddha put him back together, and the Buddha gave him the teaching of emptiness so that he could have both compassion to act and wisdom not to become overwhelmed. So, you know, that's, so, you know, many, many, you know, you don't have to be a Buddhist to have compassion and want to do good in the world.

[32:56]

But I think that what Buddhism offers us is a particular insight that allows us to be in the world without being overwhelmed by the suffering of the world. Anybody else want to say anything? So far, I think we've been talking about related to humans who are practicing other life forms and creatures and things like that. What's their purpose? What's their purpose? Oh, yeah. What's the purpose of everything? Did I tell you I was teaching a class about that? Okay, so, all right.

[34:03]

So this is a good place to stop. I'll try to respond, okay? So in sort of a Buddhist understanding, Humans aren't separate, right? So the story is that there are realms of beings. So there's humans, and there's animals, and there's gods, which is pretty cool, and there's beings in the various hells, and that depending upon one's behavior, one's karma, one's next life occurs in one of these spheres, right? So that's kind of a traditional view. And, you know, if you feel comfortable with rebirth, you can see, you know, the connection through that. You know, like, I'll answer. And so, you know, through infinite lifetimes, it's said that every being has been our mother at least once.

[35:09]

And so, you know, the little... the little dog, the little horsey, the bird, the whatever, the unfortunate mosquito. So that's one way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it is when we talk about emptiness in Buddhism, the other side of emptiness is, stated positively, is interconnectedness. I could not exist without everything in the world that is not me. And so there's an intimate connection between all phenomenon, human, non-human, living, non-living. You can't take a piece out and isolate it. And so we do have that connection to other life forms. But you had another... You're looking like you have another... From my understanding is that Buddhism...

[36:12]

faces the gods of the angels and humans as higher than other animals. So re-breath, you know, the more good deeds of the karma we have from, say, a fly to a human. But I feel like it's all equal. It's not, you don't... Well, so here's the deal. So, you know, in sort of the traditional understanding of it, Being a god is not that great, okay? I mean, it's great, right? You know, like, you know, it's pretty, it's nice, you don't suffer as much, you live longer, you know, lots of good sex, all of that stuff. But the problem with being a god is that the gods are so drowned in pleasure that they can't contemplate the dharma. They can't contemplate what their suffering is. And, you know, gods, no matter how long they live, When the karma is exhausted, they die, and the cycle continues.

[37:16]

So the different realms are talked about in terms of the amount of suffering, and the most fortunate realm is the human realm, because there's enough suffering in the human realm to keep us awake to the nature of suffering, but there's not so much that we can't think of anything else. Okay? I think we're going to have to stop there. Because we could go on forever with this conversation. One last, if there's any short question or comment, and then we'll say goodnight. Going... Oh, hey! If there is no place to rest, and one's experience in the places of deep suffering are also places of deep... sweetness, is that a place to rest? Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing, Prajnaparamita discovered that she could tap dance in midair.

[38:28]

Isn't that great? Yeah. Yeah, somebody wrote that on the meal board a couple weeks ago. The bad news is that we're all falling through infinite space. The good news is that there's no ground. And I wish I'd said that, but I think it was Trungpa Rinpoche. So anyhow, thank you all. It's getting late, and I'm coming apart, so it's probably time to go. Okay, thank you. 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, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving. May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[39:25]

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