This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. We may have some audio problems. They predicted we have an inferior mic, but... How's it working again? Can you hear me? We may have crackles and various other things that are added to the evening's audio apparently. A demonstration. Do we have anyone here for the first time tonight? One, two, wow. Welcome. One person tell me how they heard about us and why they're here.

[01:05]

No volunteers? Please someone say the internet. And what? Excellent. An internet useful finally. It's wonderful. Well I hope you found a new Sangha home. So, Rosalie titled this practice period, Practicing with Intention, Making a Difference in the World. What a wonderful title. And then the subtext on that was, Intention is the crucial link between our view of reality and our activity in this world. Our activity changes the world, our lives, and the lives of everyone around us. So I was thinking, well, I should say something about the subject that she laid out.

[02:10]

And then I said, view of reality. And right off the bat I was wondering a little bit, well, what is this reality and what is our view of reality? Anyway, I was thinking about that and the first thing I realized is it's kind of a humbling question. What is reality and what is our view of it? I mean, clearly, the first thing we have to recognize is that we have to address that question with a certain amount of humility because clearly our view of reality, if there is such a thing as reality, is extremely limited. We have a very narrow view of reality and our reality is quite different from say, the bird's view of reality, or a fish's view of reality, or a tree's view of reality, and probably quite somewhat different from our friend's view of reality. And last week I was vacationing with my wife in Hawaii, and one of the things I like to do is snorkel.

[03:16]

And it seems like you can predict swells when I decide to go to Hawaii and snorkel. So the first day was very... bad visibility, but I went out anyway. And you've got your goggles on and you're out there in the ocean and you really see almost nothing of what's going on around you. I don't know if many of you have ever snorkeled and been snorkeling around and turn around and have a barracuda right there looking at you in the eye. How did that get there? I don't know if I want to be that close to that fish. And you realize I am totally you know, out of my element here. You know, my view of reality is just extremely small and I'm living in a world where everybody else has great views of reality. Even a few days later it cleared up and I got, you know, maybe 40 foot of visibility and you'd be paddling along, you know, trying to find fish.

[04:17]

I've told this particular story before but it always amazes me how you can be looking for fish and see nothing and then you just sort of stop take a breath, give up a little bit, and then there's hundreds of fish around you. Everywhere you look, there's fish. Was that because they, since you quit paddling, they bothered to gather around, or you just hadn't seen them before? So, anyway, this is just a long way of saying I think it's the same when you're above ground. You actually have a very limited view of reality. And... partly because reality is always changing. That's the fundamental statement of Buddhism is everything's changing. So even though you may have a glimpse of reality a moment ago, it seems to have moved on and changed to something else. And you're also limited by your belief system. You know, we each come with a certain set of beliefs that we picked up early in our life.

[05:22]

I call it the map of our world. And we also, you know, our view of the world depends an awful lot on what mood we're in. I don't know if you've ever sort of noticed that when you're glum. The whole world looks glum. The world hasn't changed that much, but, you know, because you're... So, anyway, I was thinking about this issue of what, you know, where does our view of the world come from and why does the nature of the view of the world that we have seem to cause us so much suffering and cause other people's suffering because our view of the world differs so radically from what's actually happening in the world. So I was thinking about that this morning. We have quite a few visitors from around the world, actually, Europe and Australia and places, staying with us because there's a mindfulness and compassion

[06:23]

conference going on at UCSF and so I've been having conversations in the morning with these, there's neuroscientists and therapists and all these people and they're gonna talk about Buddhism and all these different things and I thought, well I was inspired to look at this question about a view of reality from two different viewpoints just as a kind of mind experiment. One is from a therapeutic point of view and the other is from the Heart Sutra. So if you bear with me while I just read a little bit of a description of what's called the control mastery theory. So here we go. The adoptive imperative. All animals are predisposed, hardwired, that is, by evolution to adapt to their environment. That's us. For humans and most mammals, survival and adaptation requires maintaining a stable connection or attachment to parents, family members, or other caregivers.

[07:28]

A key to adaption in humans is the formation of a reliable concept of reality, an internal map of the physical and interpersonal world. This map-making process begins early in infancy, and one of the primary ways we develop our map of reality is by forming and testing hypotheses about how the world works. In other words, in order to adapt to our environment, we develop beliefs about our family, our relationships, our world, and ourselves. This process of developing and testing beliefs begins shortly after birth and continues throughout life. So here we are busy developing our map of the world, our internal map, and our external map. Human behavior is regulated by perceptions of safety and danger. These perceptions are an integral part of the map-making process. In order to develop a reliable and useful conception of reality, the individual must frequently assess his internal and external world to determine which experiences are safe and which are dangerous.

[08:40]

Traumatic emotional experiences are, for example, experiences of danger. Indeed, trauma is defined as any situation that overwhelms a person with anxiety or fear or leads a person to believe an important goal must be renounced in order to avoid the danger of hurting loved ones or the danger of being hurt by them. So you're a young person and you're in a situation which is traumatic to you. It overwhelms you with anxiety or fear and you're worried that it's going to upset your relationship with your... caregiver, your parent. Important goal, so that leads a person to believe an important goal must be renounced in order to avoid the danger of hurting loved ones or the danger of being hurt by them. For example, an adult person who has difficulty expressing anger is frequently ruled by a pathogenic belief developed when he was young that angry feelings will wound or destroy a loved one.

[09:47]

A person who suffers from work inhibitions or sabotages his or her own success often has unconscious pathogenic beliefs that success would be injurious to a loved ones. So these pathogenic beliefs are developed when we're young based on traumatic experiences we have of safety and danger and we develop goals or ideas about our life and the world to avoid those dangerous situations. Psychopathology stems from pathogenic beliefs, maps that typically stem from traumatic childhood experiences. These beliefs, which are usually unconscious, are extremely frightening and constricting because they suggest that the pursuit of an important goal is fraught with danger. So, Here's a system where because of the childhood we all led, we have a certain map and belief about what we can do and what we can't do that allows us not to follow certain goals that we might follow otherwise because we're afraid.

[11:06]

We're afraid. Someone might... Be afraid to be intimate with a person because they have a belief that they would be rejected. Someone else might have other fears. Someone might be afraid of taking center stage because early on they were told you don't take center stage. Various fears like this stemming from deep beliefs that are actually unconscious in us and then sort of just surface in certain ways. These beliefs really affect the way we view the world. We view the world in a way that prohibits us from doing all kinds of things that would be in our benefit. In view of how painful and destructive these pathogenic, pathogenic again means suffering-producing beliefs. These are beliefs that you developed in your childhood that cause you suffering. They cause you suffering because the belief is a picture of the world and what you can do that is not actually true anymore in the world that you live in.

[12:14]

Why would a person maintain beliefs about themselves that lead to suffering and dysfunction? You've got these in your childhood. You're now an adult. Why do you hold on to them? Well, you hold on to them because they were so strongly built when you were young and such an important part of your survival that you don't give up on them easily. But according to this theory, we are highly motivated to relinquish or disconfirm these suffering-producing beliefs we have about ourselves and the world. but we are impeded in doing so by the perception of how dangerous it would be to give up these beliefs because they were built with the idea that it was dangerous to do these things. But anyway, the theory has that people who seek psychotherapy are motivated to disconfirm or relinquish these pathogenic beliefs in order to proceed with normal developmental goals

[13:21]

the patient has an unconscious plan or strategy to do this. So this system believes that you develop these pathogenic beliefs, this map of the world when you were young, and as you got older, you actually started to develop a plan inside of you to overcome these, to disconfirm or relinquish these beliefs. This is called a patient strategy. This is an unconscious intention you have to get well, to free yourself from these suffering-producing beliefs. We all have maps of the world that we developed when we were young. Not all of them are pathogenic. Some of them are maps of the world based on the culture we were raised in. maps of the world based on the political beliefs of our parents, maps of the world based on the religion we were raised with, and all of these maps of the world and who we are, each one of them limits more and more our ability to see what's actually going on in front of us because we tend to view the world through the lens

[14:46]

of these concepts instead of being able to see the world as it is. Okay, so that's a basic therapeutic model I wanted to throw out there. Now I want to discuss a little bit how the Heart Sutra describes this similar phenomenon. And here's just one sentence from the Heart Sutra. How many people aren't familiar with the Heart Sutra? The same people that came here for the first time? Heart Sutra is probably the most common Buddhist sutra that's chanted in most Buddhist organizations. It's chanted every day in this organization. Anyway, this is a sentence from that sutra that goes, The bodhisattva relies on Prajnaparamita and thus the mind is without hindrance.

[15:53]

Without hindrance there is no fear far beyond all inverted view one realizes nirvana. So for those who aren't familiar with terminology bodhisattvas are beings dedicated to awakening everyone in particular awakening themselves. So everybody that's in this room is a bodhisattva because they would like to wake up to the reality of their life. And nirvana is basically a peaceful, stable foundation for our life. So in this little sentence that I've read, it says, the mind of a bodhisattva is without hindrance, without hindrance there is no fear, far beyond all inverted views one realizes can have a stable, peaceful foundation for our life. So what are the hindrances to our mind? In Buddhist terminology, a hindrance here means something that covers our mind or an obstacle that prevents us from seeing reality as it is.

[16:59]

Obstacles are illusions, delusions, creations of our thought. We fear because of our desires. We think they must be fulfilled and we are afraid that's impossible. We think there is only one way to live, even though there are many ways. So our desires, our ideas, our values become hindrances and we are not free. If we remove our imagined obstacles, we can grow in many different ways. I just have to look at that again. Obstacles are illusions, delusions, and creations of thought. I've been thinking about thinking lately, and is it really true that all these thinking... I mean, thinking is one of the most magnificent things we do as human beings. It's phenomenal. Thinking is... I mean, we go to the moon with what we can think.

[18:05]

We have discovered that we have galaxies of galaxies out there spinning in space. All of this because of the fantastic mind that we have that thinks evolve to a place where we actually have all these thoughts going through it all the time. And thinking is enjoyable, isn't it? Don't you enjoy thinking a lot? Not so much, huh, Eli? Not so much because sometimes the thinking we're doing is actually painful, right? Sometimes we're thinking thoughts that cause us pain. Kind of an odd idea, isn't it? That we would sit there and have all these thoughts going on that would cause us pain. So the theory here is that these thoughts, these delusions, these creations are actually hindering our ability to see what's going on in reality.

[19:10]

There are stories. There are stories about who we are that come from these maps, these view of the world that we have. And we believe these stories. We actually think these stories are true about ourselves and true about the world that we live in. You know, I noticed a lot that... probably the person in the world that treats me the worst is me. My thinking mind. If anybody else was as critical of me as I am, I would not put up with it. I mean, really.

[20:15]

And I don't know if you've noticed that about yourself, that your thinking mind is fairly critical of you and Why do you put up with it? Why do you believe it? Why do you buy into this story that your mind has created about who you are and how you're operating in the world and what's going on? So how do we become free of these hindrances? And So I'll just put that out there. They're like big obstacles, these thoughts, these stories in your head, these ideas about what the world is, according to Buddhism, are causing you great suffering. And the second sentence which I read there is, far beyond all inverted views one realizes nirvana. One realizes this peaceful place, if you get beyond

[21:18]

all inverted views. And in this term, inverted means like upside down views. It's a view of the world that's turned upside down. It's like we're living in a dream world instead of being in the actual world. We create our own picture of the world depending on our karma or experience and we think it's the whole world. The world is so enormous. I was talking about our limited view. Our conceptual view of the world is so narrow. I mean, it just can't possibly be close to describing what's going on in reality. But we buy into this so much. We put so much credibility in the thinking mind. And what this statement is saying is that's a totally upside-down view of what's going on. We assume our thoughts operate our body and mind.

[22:20]

Our body and mind serve the emperor of thought. Our thinking mind is running the show. We think. But you could say, well, thinking is just something we do. We're just thinking. Thinking is thinking. Hearing is hearing. Seeing is seeing. Smelling is smelling. Tasting is tasting. These are just one of the many things that we're doing, but we put so much credibility on thinking. And that's the part that's upside down. So in our practice, what we do is we say, well, there's an entire life force that's going on here that's living in your body, living in your digestive system, living... outside of you, living all around you. And that life force should be the controlling factor of how you live your life, not the thinking mind.

[23:25]

The thinking mind is part of it. It has a role to play, but it has an outside role to play in our own mind. So all of this probably seems evident. you, right? I'm not saying anything that anybody doesn't understand and follow, right? For those of you who haven't sat Zazen, Zazen is one of those places where you get a stark view of the reality of the delusion and confusion in your mind. You sit at a 40 minute period of zazen and just sit there and pay attention to what your mind's thinking and it becomes pretty clear that there's a lot of problem going on there in your mind. And after you've noticed that, if you sit all day long for four or five or six or seven days, you realize this problem is pretty deep.

[24:29]

It's a pretty deep problem. But also while you're sitting, you start to realize that this mind doesn't have to have that much control over you. You get a kind of freedom from it because you've seen through the delusion. You've actually seen that these are obstacles and hindrances that are limiting your view of reality, limiting your view of yourself and limiting your life, but they're not real. They're empty. They're not really... You can just let go. You can just let them go. We all get caught in those cycles of thinking, right? They go on for a while. We're lost in a story.

[25:32]

And that story builds a world that we live in that's the kind of dream world that causes us pain and suffering and then we come out of it. So what if we were able to catch that earlier? Let it go. Not believe it. Start to step away from the power of those stories in our life. Live in a real world. I didn't bring a watch. I have no idea what time it is. Can somebody tell me what time it is? 8.18. Okay. I guess I probably, I'm going to think about what I'm going to talk about.

[26:41]

In the sentence I read from the Heart Sutra, it says, without these hindrances, there is no fear. Fear is really a dominant element in our life. It keeps us from doing all kinds of things. But what it's saying here is if you understand the illusion or unsubstantiality of these thoughts in your mind that cause you to be afraid to do things, you won't be afraid anymore. You can actually start to overcome your fears. And one of the things about that is fear, if it actually stops you from... Feeling fear is natural.

[27:46]

It happens all the time. We have a lot of fear, and there's good reasons to have fear. If you're in dangerous situations, fear is a life-protecting force. We evolve fear to keep us alive. So sometimes the feeling of fear makes us... feel alive because it's telling us, protect yourself. So that's a good thing about fear. But an awful lot of our fear, like fear of failure, fear of disappointing our friends, lots of fears that we have are constructed from these thoughts in our mind that are not true. And so if you have a fear, oh, I can't do that, well, maybe you try to do it. And you find out, well, maybe you can do it. Maybe it was okay. And we could start to live with our fear and not have it dominate us as much. Life is not as complicated as we make it out to be.

[29:01]

It's just getting up, eating, doing what we're doing. The mind has made our life much more complicated than it needs to be. Our thinking seems to take things and choose to maximize the suffering that we can get from them. So anyway, going back in the opposite direction again, if you're listening to this lecture, you'd think that I was saying that thinking is bad. Thinking is great. We can't communicate with each other. We can't do sentences. We can't build anything. We can't live without thinking. But at the same time, we have to be able to observe that an enormous amount of our thinking is causing us suffering. And that's the thinking that we can let go of.

[30:05]

In many ways, thinking is the most joyful response to our life. I'm alive. A thought. That tree is there. A thought. It's beautiful. So anyway, I've described two ways that one views the obstacles in our life that cause our view to be limited. One is... The therapeutic view that we have these pathogenic beliefs built from our early childhood that we need to disconfirm through, if you were in a therapeutic situation, talking to a therapist who tells you what your pathogenic beliefs are so that you can see them and encourages you to do things that would disconfirm them or relinquish them. On the Zen side, we say that You have all these obstacles and thoughts and stories in your mind that allow you not to see reality as it is. And the solution to that is to sit zazen.

[31:13]

Notice what's going on in your mind. Live in a sangha where other people can help you realize that these deluded thoughts in your mind aren't true. And... the beliefs of Buddhism and follow the precepts and the paramitas and you will eventually become clear about the parts of your mind that are helpful to you and the parts of your mind that aren't helpful to you. So, once you have done those things, what is the What's the result of all of this? The result of all of this is that you should be able to... Well, so if our intention is either as a therapeutic patient to have a plan to disconfirm our pathogenic beliefs or as a Buddhist to overcome our obstacles and hindrances, at the end, how do we act in the world?

[32:26]

What is the activity that we do? And I would say the activity is that we should try to see everything that we see as Buddha, either objects or people. And if you try to view everything you see as Buddha, you will be kinder to the world than you are. And you should try to help. So my summary of... the day is be humble about your view of the world. When you're viewing the world, view everything you see as Buddha and try to help when you can. What's the time now? 8.25? Do I have time for one story about helping?

[33:26]

Zuckiroshi, in August of 1971, the year he was, I think he knew he was ill. We didn't know he was ill, and he gave a lecture at Tassahara on a famous koan, which goes the following. Fuketsu said to the assembled monks, if one particle of dust is raised, the state will come into being. If no particle of dust is raised, the state will perish. So basically what that means is if you do something, in this case the state, you'll start a Zen temple. And if you don't do something, you won't start a Zen temple. And Tsukiroshi is talking about the fact that he started Tassahara. And he was talking about how, whether that was a good thing or not.

[34:32]

And he said, in the great universe, you know, or in the great Buddha land, the start of Zendo is, he's just laughing, like picking up dust, you know, not so big a thing. Even though it is a very small thing, you know, but if you don't do it, nothing will happen. But is this, you know, something very meaningful? You know, we should think about is it meaningful to become prosperous? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? If something good happens, something bad will happen at the same time. Most likely, if one good thing happens, if one good thing happens, five or ten or twenty bad things will happen. Interesting perspective from a man who started probably the most famous Zen monastery in America. saying you try to do something good like start a Zen monastery and 20 bad things will happen from the one good thing you try to do.

[35:34]

So we should think whether to pick up one dust to establish something is a good thing or a bad thing. But if you don't, nothing will happen. This is our problem when we try to act and help someone. This is also true. What will you do? Will you pick up one dust or don't pick up any dust? Leave everything as it is without saying anything? Many people choose to let beings suffer. Let them go in the wrong direction saying, this is not our problem. Let it go as it goes. I cannot do anything with you. That is, we will not pick up any dust. But if you want to do something with them, if you want to help them, at the same time many bad things will follow. This is very interesting but very real. What a humbling view of our actions.

[36:35]

So here we are with our very limited view of the world trying to see every human being we see as a Buddha and trying to help in whatever way we can and living with the fact that whatever we do will probably be a big mistake and cause lots of problems. But we have to do it anyway. Thank you very much. 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 sfzc.org and click Giving.

[37:40]

May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[37:43]

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