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. So it's nice to be here with you. And I have a reputation or fact of not speaking very loud. So can you hear me okay? Yes. Because you're welcome to get closer. I'm kind of hopefully friendly. Anyway, let me know if my voice gets too low. I'll try to speak up. I have a habit of the most important things I want to say like this. I'll see how I do it. So, the short version of what I want to talk about... is something called the three characteristics and their opposites.

[01:03]

Three characteristics occasionally, especially in the early years, you know, studying Zen, sometimes people refer to them as three marks of existence. And I don't know if that's old-fashioned. I don't know what you're familiar with. But the idea of the three characteristics or three marks of existence has a very powerful state, you know, kind of toned idea to it, that And then people will say that everything that exists has these three qualities, these three characteristics. And these characteristics are usually translated into English as impermanence, and then sometimes suffering, and sometimes as unsatisfactoryness, the second one. And the third one is not-self. And so those are the three. When people say it's the three characteristics of existence, it's kind of like statements of physics. This is what reality is like. The building blocks of reality have these three qualities as part of them.

[02:08]

And so it has a kind of absolute kind of truth to it. It's a statement about the universe. And so this is not quite how it's taught in the earliest tradition of Buddhism. And that's what I've done most of my studies and research in recent years. And so that's usually what I do when I come down here. That's what I'm studying. I talk about the suttas, especially the polycanon, the canonical texts of Theravada Buddhism. It's one of the earliest texts of Buddhism. So the three characteristics, the word three characteristics doesn't exist in this early tradition. that eventually it became used, and the word is lakana, and eventually it referred to as the three characteristics. But to get a sense of maybe the nuance of difference, as part of the introduction to what I'm going to do here, is when they had a label or category term for these three, in their earliest texts they were called the three perceptions.

[03:15]

And it's very different from saying... the three characteristics of perception versus the three characteristics of reality, of existence. The first would be considered a kind of metaphysical statement about reality and epistemology, philosophers would call it. And the second is a statement about how we perceive or conceive of our reality. And it's much more subjective, and that philosophers call it more like phenomenology. or epistemology, the study of how we see and understand. And it seems that the early Buddhist tradition was very seldom making broad-term generalizations or statements about reality itself, almost as if it wasn't interested in what's out there in terms of reality. It was much more psychologically focused to study what's happening psychologically, and very sophisticated in its analysis of the whole psychological or mental processes of perception, of cognition, and how that all works.

[04:20]

And so they call the three characteristics three perceptions. And so that puts it in the presence, it puts it in the context of our subjective experience of perception. And often, innocently, people will think that we perceive accurately what's in the world, But in fact, we often don't perceive what's up there. We conceive what's up there. And so we could conceive at this moment, maybe, that this has become a classroom. Maybe. You know, if this is all we ever did, it's a classroom. But we know that it's a dining room. Some, you know, the dining room over there becomes a study hall during practice period. And we could probably turn it into a workshop room or a massage room. You can do all kinds of things. It could morph. And so our perception of it is conditioned upon how we conceive of it. And so we have a subjective or internal role in how we perceive.

[05:22]

So that's kind of the direction of which the early tradition is pointing to. In the years that I've been practicing Buddhism, especially when I encountered Theravada Buddhism, there was a tremendous emphasis on these three characteristics. And they're presented often in Theravada Buddhism as the absolute true statements about reality that you're supposed to understand, believe. You're supposed to kind of see your world through this understanding. And the most painful situation for me in this kind of way approach was I was part of a Buddhist group that went through a tremendous amount of turmoil. A lot of people felt hurt. There were just bad decisions made. People were treated very badly. And the people who did some of the bad treatments offered them, they were kind of in charge, came to me and said, Gil, to those people who feel so hurt, why don't you go teach them how everything's impermanent?

[06:27]

A person in power tells me to tell people who were oppressed, it's all impermanent, that just kind of makes it all okay, or just get over it. That was, I thought, abuse of Buddhist teachings. So the three characteristics. The thing I most want to talk about today is not the three characteristics, but I want to talk about their opposites. So they are perceptions, and they're very important perceptions for the purpose of liberation. And the Theravag tradition, the early tradition, puts a lot of... emphasis on practicing in such a way that a person can have very acute and deep experience of how the world of perceptions are impermanent or somehow unsatisfactory and that you cannot find any self in those experiences.

[07:30]

However, they're not meant to be belief systems. You're not supposed to kind of understand. You spend a lot of time understanding exactly how this is. And then, because you understand it, they'll go around and apply that understanding to everywhere. But rather, they're supposed to be insights, where something that, with the right conditions of the mind, you really clearly perceive in a deep inner way. So it becomes obvious. And I like to call it sometimes revelation. We don't have so often revelation in Buddhism, so it's kind of like a provocative thing to say, maybe. But I say it with the idea that it's being revealed rather than it's being conceived, rather than something we're kind of figuring out or understanding and applying an understanding. It just kind of becomes clear. And so the purpose of early Buddhist practice was to come to a place where you have this real insight into the three characteristics.

[08:34]

However, the means... to have those three characteristics, is to cultivate the opposite. And as you cultivate the opposite, then at some point, it allows the three characteristics to be revealed. So the opposite of impermanence, I like to think of it as stability. And so we're actually cultivating stability. A stable mind, a stable body, a stable presence. And it turns out that the more stable or still and concentrated the mind is, the easier it is for it to perceive the constant change that is the impermanent thing. And we can all see impermanent things change, you know, pretty easily. You go out and look at the river to see a change. But as a deep insight, it's something that involves much more acute and refined... experience of change and impermanence than watching something, seeing the sun rise and set.

[09:40]

You're seeing the ordinary things of life change. But in order to have this kind of acute, deeper insight, it takes having a very still and stable and quiet mind. Partly because that's a mind that's not swirling around in thoughts and ideas and concepts. And if we see the world through our ideas, we don't really see very clearly. So, you know, if I come in here and I have an idea that this is a classroom, I don't, you know, I'm only seeing it partly. I don't really see the totality or the depth or the underlying kind of nature of this room if I only see it as a classroom. And so there has to kind of be some kind of dropping or seeing through the concept to be able to see more of what's going on that's building towards that concept. So a stable mind. And so a lot of practice focuses on the stability.

[10:41]

And, you know, when I was in Japan, studying in the Zen monasteries there, there was a lot of emphasis on concentration and stillness, just really being present in a strong way. And that's historically the case. I think even if you're not trying to develop a stable, still mind... To some degree here at Tassajara, if you live here long enough, the whole environmental practice, the routine, the schedule, tends to bring a fair amount of stability that some people don't realize until they leave. And then they kind of realize how much they've been affected by being here. If you tell people, which I've heard teachers do, that everything's impermanent, that they come very quickly to say that, That's a good teaching for some people. But for some people, they've had a life of tremendous upheaval and change that is actually like putting salt in the wound to tell them that everything is changing and that's the nature of self.

[11:47]

People have grown up in war and poverty, constantly changing environments, never any stability, been changing from one family to another, foster family to foster family growing up. And that's what their whole experience of life is instability. And to just say everything's impermanent and just going to help you makes it really hard. Some people psychologically need to have a deep abiding sense of stability, first and foremost, before it makes sense to really understand how the experience of impermanence is helpful and valuable, as opposed to more destabilizing. So a lot of Buddhist practice has to do with cultivating stability, the opposite. So the second of the characteristics is dukkha, so sometimes translated as suffering, sometimes as unsatisfactoriness. The opposite of this is some deep abiding sense of satisfaction or some deep abiding sense of happiness or well-being.

[12:48]

And traditionally, Buddhist practice, one of the functions of meditation practice, especially meditation practice, but ethical practice, generosity, The variety of practices in Buddhism is explicitly, in these early texts, is explicitly for the purpose of cultivating happiness, well-being. When people practice ethics, it's so they can have the bliss of blamelessness. And when you practice letting go of the hindrances, hindrances to meditation, so you have a stable mind that's not caught up in the swirl of thoughts and desires and aversions, That's so that the mind can become delighted. Practice concentration practices so there can be a sense of welling up, a wellspring of joy, delight, and happiness. And these experiences of well-being are very important to create the foundation so that we can look at suffering.

[13:52]

And it's a very different context to look at the suffering of life, the unsatisfactory of life in a deep way, while we have a strong sense of well-being. A little example of this in my own practice, when I was practicing in Burma, I had a somewhat classical vipassana experience, a human experience. I was doing walking meditation, And I was watching myself in my present moment and saw in my mind what I was thinking. And with the acute sensitivity I had at that time, I saw that even benign thoughts that I was having had a certain level of stress or suffering, unsatisfactoriness, the very fact that I was thinking of them in this very sensitive state. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. And then I kind of generalized and I said,

[14:55]

And I kind of stopped and it kind of blew my mind that I knew there was a lot of suffering in the world. But now I thought that the amount of suffering in the world is exponentially greater than I realize. If everyone else is actually having some kind of minor suffering or stress, even in the most benign thoughts as they drift through, you have to be very still to see how that operates. I said, wow, there's a lot of suffering in the world. It was kind of a little overwhelming to kind of feel. But what was happening in my meditation during that time was I was filled with rapture, filled with joy and happiness. And it was, you know, palpable. It was like radiating. It was a feeling it had. And so I had this very strong experience, mind-stopping, heart-stopping experience of universal suffering. But it was kind of in this field of well-being. So it was kind of a place to be held, or it was easier to be with.

[15:56]

If I had been miserable and felt, you know, that there was hopeless in my life, and, you know, it felt kind of oppressed by the suffering of the world, to then exponentially feel that suffering was even greater than I realized, it might have just done me in. So there's something about cultivating and developing well-being that that allows us to look at life and ourselves, the challenges, our psychological, personal challenges and suffering, that of our world, and puts it in a very different context that maybe helps us not to take it so personally, helps us to be kind of caught by it, but to be able to benefit from it, have insight from it, and perhaps even learn how to discover freedom in relationship to it. Make sense? The third characteristic is that of not-self. And what that means is understanding that, again, it's a perception. So as we perceive, have our experience of the world that we perceive, it's the recognition that nothing that we perceive qualifies to be called the self, the self, an enduring, lasting, permanent self.

[17:15]

And that experience can be quite acute when the mind is quite concentrated, when the mind has freed itself of the concepts and ideas that lend with which project permanence and constancy on our life. So if we're not projecting or thinking that things are permanent, or this is going to be this way forever, and the mind is still in very strong concentration and mindfulness, We start seeing that the acts of perception, everything around us, is arising and passing, arising and passing. And in that arising and passing phenomena, we cannot find anything that qualifies as a self. And if you can't see it, you can't feel it, then the only thing that's left to be a self is a concept. And if... You know, but concepts at this kind of level of practice are not very interesting. You know, that's not a nice place to find yourself, just some idea.

[18:18]

So a person has left with nothing in their experience. You look around everywhere and nothing, I can't find the self. That can be quite hard for people who have oriented themselves, found their stability and safety in life around a notion of self. This is who I am. You need to be this way. People need to see me this way. I need to reject myself this way. And I remember one of my early years at Zett Center, feeling I had come to the edge of a cliff. And I was too afraid to step over the edge. Because I could see that a lot of the self-concepts of who I was were no longer true. And it was time to put them down. But I was too afraid to put them down. It felt like I had to step over an abyss. So I held back, and I'm not going to do that. So it took me a while to kind of work through that, because it just seemed too frightening to not have those concepts that are operating.

[19:25]

So it can be hard, this experience of non-self. And I talk to a lot of people who do deep meditation practice and get quite disoriented, sometimes quite afraid. when this kind of experience of not-self arises in a very strong way. But it's a lot easier to have this insight into not-self if there is a strong sense of self-confidence. Certain kind of things that psychologists would call the strong sense of self, strong sense of monitoring oneself, confidence, efficacy, agency, honesty, You know, all kinds of things that we maybe evolve kind of what might be called the strong sense of self. I like to, you know, categorize the term confidence. You may have strong confidence. Then in that confidence, you feel, you see, experience, recognize. Nothing here is, there's no self here in this experience.

[20:26]

It's kind of okay because the confidence holds you through it. The trust in the confidence. So part of Buddhist practice is to cultivate strong confidence, strong sense of faith or trust or belief in, maybe not, maybe you want to use the word self, but confidence in the capacity to be present for the experience, the very default experience, to be present and make wise choices as we go through our lives, to have confidence that maybe the Dharma, Practice is holding you up so you can go into difficult situations. There's all kinds of ways in which confidence grows through this practice. And some of you who've been here a long time at Tassahara have probably seen people come in. And after some period of time, you can see how a certain level of confidence and strength and stability grows, despite kind of the lifestyle and the practice that goes on here. I've seen it many times here.

[21:27]

It's quite inspiring. And so... So the cultivation of confidence is a... So what I'm pointing to here is there's things that we are cultivating in this early Buddhism. There's things that are being cultivated in practice. And we cultivate the things that support us to have the insights. So we're cultivating stability and associated things like that. We're cultivating... well-being, and we're cultivating confidence in a whole range of things that might be related to that. And sometimes these can be done, practiced and cultivated intentionally, and sometimes they just come along in the wake of the practice we're doing. I think part of the brilliance of Zen practice is that sometimes, you know, probably some of you know this, I don't know, I haven't been at Tassahara lately,

[22:30]

and know what people like Greg are teaching. But Zen teachings are somewhat famous for not giving you a lot of instruction. And there's a lot of wisdom to that. But what happens in the wake of the practice you do that doesn't explain a lot is that all these things tend to grow and develop over time. Zen students tend over time to develop a lot of stability. It's impressive to see a mature institute, their presence is stability and how they're just present in a strong way and how they can be in situations of conflict and just kind of be stable and strong, respond to it and be with it without attacking or running away. Over time, there tends to be a greater sense of well-being that develops or delight or just... And then over time, it tends to be greater confidence.

[23:31]

It might not be so conscious in Zen practice, because it's not even talked about, but it's clearly part of it. In other forms of Buddhism, these things are done consciously. And so people have practiced specifically to do these different things, to cultivate and develop. So when the mind, or our being, has strong stability, strong well-being... strong sense of confidence. So it's easier and easier to let go of thoughts and ideas. And we start feeling there's a refuge inside that's not dependent on our thinking, not dependent on our memories of what happened, not dependent on our plans and hopes for the future, not dependent on our evaluations of the present moment, not dependent on comparisons of right and wrong, but just willing to draw all these concepts and ideas and that kind of removes the curtains from the windows of the eyes, the inner eye, so there can be greater clarity in what we see.

[24:38]

And then it becomes a little interesting in this early tradition that in seeing impermanence, the English word impermanence is probably not the best translation for the Pali or Sanskrit word, anicca, anicca, the actual word that's translated as impermanence, it literally means inconstancy. And the difference between impermanence and inconstancy is some people, when you say everything's impermanent, some people get depressed. Because what they hear is that, yes, sooner or later it's going to die. It's going to disappear. It's not going to be here forever. And that's their idea of their permanence. In this early Buddhist tradition, the focus of Anicca is not so much that things are going to disappear, but the core part of this insight is that the perceptions of our experience are inconstant.

[25:48]

They come and they go. They come and they go. It's not that difficult to see that. your perceptions change. If you just walk through the courtyard at the end of a song, or if you sit here right now, and pay attention carefully to how you're going on with your perceptions, moment by moment, instantly by instant, it's actually kind of moving around quite a bit. And I just heard laughter. Did you hear that? You know, it was just a moment. It came, and it went. And was I paying attention to giving the talk that moment? You know? For instance, I was not focused on this talk. I look around the room, I see different colored clothes, I see different expressions on the faces. And all these things are coming and going, the perceptions. And so it turns out there's a kaleidoscope. There's some stability or some thread that's more stable than other things that would pay attention. But all these things are fleeting.

[26:48]

And so there's something about seeing the inconstancy of experience. which the early tradition says is liberating, more than just seeing that things are going to end. And the reason why seeing how things perceptually arise and pass on the time moving is that it has two values. One value is that then you can see, the more you see the changing nature of perceptions, it's easier to see how we overlay, project, concepts, thoughts, ideas on top of it. And most people, I think, go around, have no idea how thoroughly we're projecting our concepts and ideas onto a reality of thought. But it shakes up, it kind of loosens up and clarifies, shows us the powerful force of projection that we have. When you can really be in that flow of perceptions coming and going.

[27:52]

They're happening anyway. It's going on all the time. But it's very seldom that we kind of rest in it or kind of back up into it and really see that. The other value of seeing this inconstancy is not only do we see that, you know, these concepts are kind of empty, but also we see that in being empty, that it doesn't make any sense to cling to them. Because there's nothing to cling to. It's kind of like, you know, taking your fist. your hand and you really want to, you know, cling to air. I got it. It doesn't work, right, to do that. And so in very deep states of meditation, there's a clear understanding or recognition. It's impossible to cling to anything. And so then it's easier for the movement of clinging to relax because it doesn't make any sense. So the function of this constancy So that's very important to see the distinction of impermanence that might mean things are going to end someday versus seeing the inconstancy of perceptual process.

[29:05]

The seeing of inconstancy, then, in all our perceptions is the foundation for the perception of not-self. The experience of not-self is not a logical or philosophical thing to understand. Try to do that if you want. But I recommend people don't try to understand this. That doesn't belong to the world of conceptual understanding, the teaching of that self. It belongs to the world of this very, this direct experience, direct insight that comes. And that becomes pretty obvious if you see all the perceptions you could possibly have in the moment, constantly arising and passing. You see, it can't be an enduring herb in itself. I can't find anything. There's nothing in my experience of that. And then this thing about the unsatisfactoriness or the suffering. You see that everything's constantly moving, changing, and constant.

[30:10]

Any movement, any movement to try to find lasting satisfaction in those doesn't work. It's unsatisfactory. It's unsatisfactory. It's just glaringly obvious. It's unsatisfactory to hold on to this. What's satisfactory is something which is not a thing. In a sense, something which you better not think of even as an experience. And that is, what's most satisfactory is what's left when the fist opens up. When you have your hand in a fist, you have a fist. But when you open your hand, what is the hand holding? You know, that freedom of the hand, that ease of the hand, the openness of the hand, is kind of a thing, but also not really a thing. But it's, you know, it allows you to do so many more things with your hand than if you just walk around with a fist all the time.

[31:14]

So this idea of the... of the deep satisfactoriness or happiness from not being attached. So cultivate happiness to see unsatisfactoriness so we can discover a deeper wellspring of happiness that some people have never touched, never experienced. So those are my ideas that I wanted to share with you. I don't know how much they talk about the Puget characteristics here at Zet Center, but they're often a very important part of Puget textbooks or ideas about who's under there. And this is my gleaning of when I go back to Zet Puget texts and try to understand how that works there, how it gets presented. But if you have any questions, concerns, or protests, you're welcome to ask this.

[32:24]

And if you could say your name, I'd love to, before you speak. Hi, Nancy. There was a Dharma talk last night where this question arose as well for me. We're talking about some mysterious sense of life and kind of letting life unfold. and this idea of not being attached to our perceptions and letting the hand open. And yet we're human, and yet we live in society, we have families, we make commitments, we et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like how do our practical decisions relate with that concept? Well, maybe he doesn't have to. Because maybe this is not supposed to be a concept that you hold on to. It's not supposed to be a belief or understanding. You can just put aside that it's something, a concept you're supposed to negotiate and hold.

[33:27]

They're not concepts. They're insights. So, these three characteristics. And the insights come when they come. And so, the classic place of really experiencing a deep way is in meditation. deep meditation because of the stability, stillness of the mind that happens there. It happens, it can happen elsewhere. But the value is in life that sometimes, sometimes it's helpful in life to actually go off and do something different that gives you a new perspective and then you come back into your life. And to some degree, that's the whole approach of Tassara. I mean, it's a big deal to come deep into the wilderness here you know and you're really kind of separating yourself from uh you know urban life and life that normally live in order to have a whole different experience of yourself of reality of life than you could have if you're in the middle of the things like that you're describing so it's not everyone can busy or even even if you have a you know busy life to go and meditate go sit zazen

[34:41]

You're putting yourself away from your life in order to have some little different experience, perspective, something that you can bring back to your life. So what I'm describing here is that if you can practice in such a way to have these deep insights, to understand something about the nature of perceptions and concepts, how we project onto them, how we hold onto them and cling to them, and know that there's an alternative. There is a place in the heart and the mind and in life And there's like a real freedom of openness. That provides radical different experience that many people don't have, but what's possible. It's a reference point. So then if we go back into a busy life, a responsible life that you're describing, that reference point is there to put a question mark around everything you're doing. What am I doing right now? Here I'm, you know, dealing with my kids and all this stuff. And what... What ideas, what projections, what concepts have I caught in as I do this?

[35:46]

And because you have an experience, a radically different experience than this normal life, the ideas, the grasping, the clinging that we have stands out and highlight. And you put a question marks at home. And maybe you don't believe it as much as you used to. And then you have to find your way with it and decide what to do and how to work with it and how to practice with it. That's the value. Does that make sense as an answer? Are you sure? Great. Yes? When you talk about going back to the early texts, I'm just wondering a little bit about the actual process of which texts are you looking at, and which of the later texts are you looking at? Okay, so the primary kind of research that I do is in what's called the suttas. The Sanskrit word is sutras, but the Pali word, the language of these texts, it's called suttas. And these are the Pali suttas.

[36:49]

That's what I studied. And then there, these three things are called perceptions. It's in the commentaries that appeared later. The text that appeared later, that the Theravod tradition started to call them characteristics. You were saying that that Kana was never mentioned in this... The suttas in Bali? The word lakana appears in different contexts, but not in relationship with the three characteristics. It does in a title of some of the suttas, but the sutta titles were added much later. And is this true of the old video? But I don't know if it's all the truth of the whole trip it again. I don't know what happened. I'm not sure when this lakana was acquired. What did it talk about? The three lakanas? I don't know when that started.

[37:50]

It might have been Abhidhamma, which is founded in Kujhika. But that's understood to be later. So you're seeing in the suttas themselves that never actually appeared, except as a type of... That's my understanding. I've looked for it. That's what I've understood. They are called the perceptions. And so... So Selina. So Selina appears, but not... In relation to these three together. Yes. My name is Greg. So I know you're saying poly suitors, but... The sutras, the agamas of the Sarvastan school is where the Zen school gets there, early Anayana information.

[38:51]

Do you know if the three characteristics are in the agamas as well as the siftas? Agamas. I haven't studied these very quickly, but certainly that these three things, as we held it together, will be in there. But what they call them, whether they call them lakshana or whether they call them sanya, I haven't done that research. That's a good question, because if what you're trying to do is go back to the Buddha, then if you find both those bodies of literature have equal authority for going back to the Buddha. I try not to say the Buddha. I try to say the Urza early texts is the reference book. Yes? Hello, my name is Ebru. I have, I guess, hearing you speak about the three perceptions, about some long-term questioning that I've had concerning the three poisons.

[39:55]

It seemed like they kind of correlate with that in some ways. And I guess my question is, it's often unclear to me to what degree... third poison of delusion is the same or different from the kind of fundamental ignorance of a video that we often talk about as like this non-dual kind of realization thing and I guess the question boils down for me like to what degree can we sort of skip over dealing with our afflictions and have these like subidist non-dual insights and like and to what degree is it just like a simple progression of like dealing with afflictions and that when they're like when they're not well enough you know cultivated in the way that you're describing then the ground can be different because there's different things isn't

[41:07]

I think you asked a number of different things, so I'll do my best to try to find my way through your question. I haven't done a thorough study on how the delusion and moha is used in all these suttas. I have done a little bit more with avidya, which is the illness. And one of the primary understandings of avidya has to do with understanding the process by which things arise and pass. And so to really see that arising in constant nature of phenomena. The delusion tends to be more to do with the projected ideas that we put on top of things. And so there's three things that are called upside-down views. It could also be, you know, through delusions.

[42:11]

The upside-down? Upside-down views. And so, that's that things are permanent, constant, that things are happy, you know, are satisfactory, and things are self. So, that's considered delusion. The not knowing of Alija is not knowing that things are arising in passing. And so then this non-dual thing, how that relates to becoming free of the infliction, free of attachments and ethical insights, is a little difficult question for me to answer, because I think you're assuming that there's one experience of non-dual. And even though it's called non-dual, Non-dual experiences are a multiplicity. There's many kinds of things that people associate and call non-duals.

[43:11]

And so it's a little bit hard to talk about unless we get really specific what you actually mean, what non-dual means. But people can have non-dual experiences and understandings even while they have afflictions, while they have attachments. And sometimes those are very meaningful for people. And sometimes it's questionable, meaningful it is to say I had not do all while I was filled with rage. Yes. Joe? Yeah, I'm Joe. Do you have any tips for helping us tell the difference between strong confidence and bullheadedness? Stubbornness? Well, I... It's really good to ask your friends for a little bit of reality check. If you give them permission or ask them, they might help you understand. They might explain my confusion. Because you have or haven't asked them?

[44:12]

I'm just checking in. So that's one way. The other way is heightened sensitivity. to the actual experience that you're having when you have confidence and when you have bullheadedness. I think if you're really acutely sensitive to the mind-body experience, the immediacy of the experience in your muscles, your nervous system, your breathing, your mind, that confidence will probably feel nourishing. Bullheadedness will feel unsatisfying. not feel nourishing, you feel draining, tight, constricted, and you feel limitation. So you can be your own gauge, you can find your own way with this by really tuning in to what it actually feels like to be in these two ways. So if a person makes a habit and really cultivates a lot of sensory awareness, a lot of deep awareness of themselves, that becomes their teacher, helps you find your way through those kinds of issues.

[45:18]

Thank you. And you don't have to rely on your unreliable friends as much. Yes, please. Can you say something about practices on cultivating confidence? My impression is that confidence, the best way to grow confidence is to... is to do. So you have to do things and then learn from the doing. And sometimes just taking small steps is the most realistic way of doing something here, doing something. So when I was at Tassajara here, one day in the fall, they asked me to go work in the kitchen for the practice period. And I had never cooked, really. So did I have confidence? No.

[46:20]

And if they had told me that day in the fall, right then and there, you're going to be the guest cook, I probably would have fainted. But they taught me how to chop carrots. And after a while, I felt like I'd chop carrots. So there was some confidence in that. And slowly, steadily, through the practice period and through the rest of the year, I developed more and more confidence from the doing, from the feedback system, from the learning, from the mastering of... these skills. So it's from doing like that that we develop confidence as opposed to talking ourselves into it or using positive thinking or trying to figure out the better way of understanding that shows us where we, why, how we can have confidence. I think that confidence grows from the dually, from the actions that we do. That's what I think. And so even sitting and meditating, you know, meditation doesn't work. unless you do it.

[47:21]

But as we do it, slowly you develop confidence. Some people, again, often don't recognize what we go on because we're so caught up in our little traumas of the moment. We often don't see what's happening to us. So, you know, I think it was someone who told me today that, you know, that it was a big deal to sit 10 minutes. That was like, you know, a big deal, right? And slowly, people come, and they sit, and on and on. And after a while, you come here at Tasa Hara, and sitting through a 40-minute sitting is like, you know, a breeze. It's not, you know, like... And you go home, and someone says, let's sit for 40 minutes. Sure. And maybe you don't think that you're confident you can sit through 40 minutes meditation, but you have certain confidence now. And so one of the ways to cultivate confidence... is to recognize what you have confidence in. Because some people don't think in these terms.

[48:22]

And because some people are so strongly predisposed to be critical or feel unworthy or feel bad about themselves, that they don't really allow themselves to be nourished or informed or influenced by the things they do have confidence in. So one of the ways to develop the confidence is to actually stop and take a look. have the things that you're developing confidence in. Oh, yeah, look at that. Now I can sit for 40 minutes. Look at this. I can do a one-day sitting. It's a big deal. And then, wow, I just did a sashimi. I bet I could do that again. And so they're slowly developing confidence. That's an adequate answer. And you're on? But if you're on. Here, in the practice in Japan and in the Dharma, as you talk about contrast, what practice in Japan and how you come together.

[49:31]

Now it's a hybrid. Okay, so it's a huge topic to compare. in contrast. Same, but same, what's different between Zen and Vipassana? Depends a little bit, you know, there's different, whole different schools of Vipassana, whole different schools of Zen, different teachers. Sometimes there's tremendous overlap, they can look almost the same. Sometimes they look almost like the opposites from each other. So it's, you know, depends a little bit what exactly what you compare and contrast. And so sometimes it's relatively easy to see them being similar. We're talking about similar terms. It's easy to see them being different. So it's a little complicated issue. So I'll offer a couple of thoughts. Maybe it's, you know, there's little things in this answer. And one is that you have to be careful between what people actually do and the rhetoric of what they say they do.

[50:34]

So what I mean from this is when I was practicing in Japan, one of the premier Soto Zen training monasteries in Japan, the emphasis in meditation, if there was one, was concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. But the whole way the practice was set up, the rituals, the life, the bells and everything, was all there to support us to be mindful. So there was a lot of mindfulness being developed, but that wasn't the rhetoric. The fact that some people say, we don't do mindfulness. We do concentration. But actually, in Burma, the rhetoric was, we don't do concentration. We just do mindfulness. But there, the whole setup, the whole setup of how we practice, the whole thing was all there to support concentration. So we have to be, you know, what are we comparing?

[51:37]

So if you only read the books and the rhetoric and compare, you get one thing. But if you see how people practice, you get something else. One way of understanding vipassana and zazen is that they have the same goal. But in vipassana, you get to it gradually, kind of build and slowly develop to get to something like shikantazen. In Zen, They just throw you in to the deep end and expect, you know, just sit, she can't tell you, just sit. And some people understand and some people seem to flounder with that kind of instruction. So in Vipassana, it's going to systematically build towards it. And that's one way of understanding it. But the most radical thing to say about this question of yours, compare these two, is that the underlying... philosophy, dharmology, the underlying purpose or the underlying ways in which reality is seen or life is seen, is radically different in Indian Buddhism as it is in Soto Zen, I'm talking.

[52:49]

And it's almost, if you try to really respect each religion in its own terms, you'd be very careful. You can compare and contrast if you want. but it's more like comparing and contrasting apples and oranges. Apples are good, oranges are good, but they're kind of like two different species. And it does a little disservice to both of them to try to meld them too much. And so in terms of being a practitioner in both, I did a very interesting thing many years ago. 25 years ago now, I think. I was invited to the Berkeley Zen Center to teach a class on how to teach an introductory class on Buddhism. So they had all these senior practitioners there and they wanted to teach into Buddhism. They asked me to teach them how to do it. So in the course of our meetings there, I asked them to write a little paper for me on what's your core...

[54:01]

of Zen teachings of Zen. And they're all wonderful essays. But a good number of these descriptions they had were not really Zen, descriptions of Zen teachings. They were kind of classic teachings of Buddhism. You know, from the early tradition, the Four Noble Truths, things like that. And... kind of teachings are most strongly associated with Theravada Buddhism. And so it was wonderful. But there was no Zen, particularly in what they had, but how they're describing what Zen is. And so I told them, this is nice, but you know, one of the things for me, I said, I'm now a teacher in these two different traditions. So I have to make them different. I don't have the luxury of just saying, this is what it is, so they kind of, you know... land or become the same thing. And so, you know, because of beings too, I'm more sensitive to a little bit the distinctions and to respectfully allow them each to be different than what makes them unique for themselves.

[55:12]

Is that a good enough answer? Yes. Valerian, sorry. Since you just mentioned Shikantaza and studied the Buddhist text, I was wondering, I mean, when I looked a little bit into the Buddhist, I had the impression that there was this, the idea of meditation practice was this kind of more one-pointed concentration and then just kind of gradually progressing through the four jhana states. So I was wondering from your research, what you can say about when this idea of Shikantaza, of just sitting, developed, came in. Or do you already find it in the audience? No, thanks. Oh, you definitely find references to something that could be like Shikantaza. Now, it depends, again, always, this is what you get from me. I'm sorry, but this is a broken record. Is that if people ask me questions, and I'll say, well, it depends on what you actually mean, maybe specific.

[56:20]

So, an example like this, even what is Shikantaza? If I answer you as if we know we're both talking about the same thing, I think we do disservice in the discussion. Because you might have a different idea of what you can tell us other than I do. And I think probably a different Soto Zen teacher probably has a slightly different or very different understanding of what it is. So it's a little bit hard, you know, if you want to be really precise looking at this. So I could try to answer your question by offering a kind of a definition, kind of an explanation. Or I'll offer you an example of something that's taught in the early tradition of meditation practice, and you can see if it fits your idea of Shikha Thast. So as practice deepens in this early tradition, and the mind is stable, go through the jangas, then at some point, people let go of any intentionality at all.

[57:21]

So there's no intentional activity. wanting something, not wanting something, avoiding something. And the mind is no longer constructing from making anything of their experience. You're just sitting there. This very autonomous, settled mind is not making, not doing, not intending anything. Not for, again, it's not trying to attain anything, get anywhere. And so... That's one experience, one thing that's emphasized in the tradition, that for some people might see it as some similarity to sheep heptows. Sounds about right, yeah. That's good enough for you. Okay. It's 4.30. Both. Dyerdok classes are in Constantine.

[58:23]

They come and they go. Yeah. Okay, great. So I'll be around if you want to ask me, you know, other times I'm around. I'm happy to answer questions and talk and discussions with you. So I hope this was interesting and more than just interesting, I hope it has some usefulness for you. And I certainly enjoyed sitting here with you and this conversation. Thank you. Do it again tomorrow. Okay. 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 sfcc.org and click giving.

[59:12]

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