three Good morning and welcome, everybody, to Beginner's Mind Temple.

[10:57]

My name is Anna Thorne, and I'm the head of practice, the Tanto here at City Center, and I'm very happy to welcome Ben Connolly to talk to us today. He will also be giving a workshop from 1 to 4 this afternoon. So Ben Connolly is a Soto Zen teacher and a Dharma heir in the Kategori Roshi lineage. Kadigiri Roshi was the third abbot of San Francisco Zen Center a long time ago. So Ben Connolly is based in Minnesota Meditation Center and also teaches mindfulness in various secular contexts. So he does police training. He does training with people who are in recovery, addiction, have to do with addiction.

[12:03]

He does social justice work and racial justice work. And he has also written several books. One is on Shito's famous Zen poems, and one is on Vasubandu's 30 verses, wonderful comment. And one is mindfulness and intimacy and mindfulness. And the one that you might talk to us about is the three natures. It's also, again, Vasubandhu, a new translation and comment. And the book is right here. Thank you very much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, I'm just so grateful to be here, surrounded by beloved friends and folks maybe I haven't met. Maybe by the time I'll leave, we'll be a little closer.

[13:06]

You know, my teacher trained here in the early 60s. And so basically learning about Zen for me was listening to my teacher rhapsodize about Suzuki Roshi every Sunday. So I have a deep feeling of appreciation for this place carrying forward such a beautiful legacy. And I just appreciate all the practice and work that enables this to be here so I can just show up. So thank you all so much. Yeah, so I think I'm just going to jump into the material of the talk. So I'm going to be talking about Vasubandhu's Three Natures. And I know some of you, maybe this means a lot to you, the terms Vasubandhu's three natures. And for some people, it's like, what? The first word, I don't know what it means.

[14:08]

And the other three, I don't know what they refer to. So that is okay. That seems like the norm in Zen centers. Usually they're people... everywhere I go who have been practicing much longer than I have, which is very humbling. And then there's usually someone who's, maybe you're online. You're like, I just thought I'd drop into this and see what happens. Well, we'll find out. So Vasubandhu is an extremely influential Buddhist monk who lived in the fourth or fifth century in India. produced a very large body of literature that's had a really wide variety of influence on Buddhist traditions. Vasubandhu is in all Chan and Zen lineages, one of the great ancestors, is considered one of the six ornaments of Tibetan Buddhism, and is considered one of the five great ancestors of the Jodo Shinshu tradition, and probably shows up in some other traditions that I don't know about or recall.

[15:11]

So a lot of ideas that Vasubandhu was part of formulating and developing and propagating and spreading are things that people nowadays in the U.S. might just think are Buddhist ideas. But they actually were quite innovative at the time that Vasubandhu and his colleagues were producing and kind of bringing them into Buddhism. Vasubandhu is associated with various Buddhist movements, but the one I tend to focus on is called Yogacara, which means yoga practice. And Yogacara just refers to a Buddhist movement that was ultimately about integrating early Buddhist psychology with the Mahayana emphasis on collective and universal liberation. I like to say that in practical terms, what this is about is if you'd like to engage in social transformation, if you'd like to engage in making a world where we are not quite as overwhelmed by the climate crisis or you'd like to diminish the amount of patriarchy in the world or racism, if you'd like to do that work and not just be hopelessly burned out, that's what Yogachara is about.

[16:28]

It's about being able to care for ourselves and be well even as we involve ourselves in an extremely large scope. of the possibility of collective liberation. So I teach Yogacara and I focused a lot on research and practice in Yogacara because it is part of the Zen tradition. So I feel it's appropriate as a Zen teacher to be bringing this forward. I teach it because I have found the teachings to be particularly transformative for me and people I know. And in large part, I do them because they form the philosophical basis and the underpinnings of Thich Nhat Hanh's vision for collective liberation. So Thich Nhat Hanh is the person who really brought me to Buddhism, certainly an enormously influential figure in the last hundred years in Buddhism. And so I feel a deep gratitude.

[17:30]

And he draws on many different things. aspects of Buddhism, but in looking, he had a very deep scholarly knowledge of Buddhism. And as he looked through many different traditions, it's clear that he saw that Yogacara really presented one of the clearest frameworks for how to do what he came to call engaged Buddhism, or this process where there can be a deep wellness for the individual, even as they go and directly meet great systemic harms. So I do this in a way to honor and carry forward Thay's beautiful vision. So let's see, I'll talk about the three natures. So there are various kind of innovative things within Yogacara, innovative in relation to what had come before in Buddhism. So generally speaking, kind of the two most notable innovations are the idea of the Alaya Vishnana or the store consciousness, which I'm not going to talk about.

[18:36]

But some of you might go, oh, I've heard of that. And the other one is the three natures. And so I'll be talking about the three natures today. Three natures is kind of, it's pretty philosophical. So the idea is it gives you a way of looking at the world that is conducive to liberation. And it gives you kind of tools for looking at the world in a way that's conducive to liberation. Because it turns out, or it seems to me, that a lot of the ways that we look at the world are not. I don't know about you. I find myself looking at the world in a lot of ways that are conducive to my suffering or the suffering of people around me. And you turn on the news and you go, boy, seems like we could maybe do a little better. Maybe we could do a little better. This teaching says it is useful to view all phenomena or each phenomena as being of three natures. Or you could say as having three natures.

[19:40]

Or you might also say it's useful to view each thing as having these three characteristics. So sometimes we use the term Lakshana, which means characteristic. Sometimes Svabaha, which means nature. So it's like everything you see, hear, smell, think, taste. Any emotion, all of it you can see is having these three natures. And the claim is that will be beneficial. And I will try and forward that claim in the course of this talk in my time here. No, the three natures are the imaginary, the dependent, and the complete realized natures. The imaginary nature of things is what you think they are. The dependent nature is that they appear. The way they do, dependent on other things. And the complete realized nature is that they are not what you think they are. No problem. Now, you might think, well, some of you may be thinking, yeah, that's just basic Buddhism.

[20:45]

Some of you may be thinking, I don't know what you just said. And some of you may be realizing this is an enormously and radically challenging set of teachings. Anything you think is a thing. is of imaginary nature, and its complete realized nature is that it's not what you think it is. And it is dependent on other things. So the implications of this teaching are pretty broad. And for those of you who've been around Buddhism quite a bit, you might see very clear commonalities between... The idea of the absolute and relative nature of the two truths and the three natures are actually deeply related ideas so you might see a lot of like, oh, that sounds like that other thing. And you're very likely correct. One of the things that we'll see or I'll try and demonstrate here is that the fact that things are imaginary definitely does not mean that they don't matter.

[21:45]

In fact, The three nature's teachings and the emphasis on the imaginary nature of things is very specifically there to reclaim the importance of what we do. So some teachings in Buddhism, when Yogacara arose, started to be confusing to people in that it looked like, if there are no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no sight, no sound, no smell, no taste, no touch, no object... Why am I doing this practice and why does anything matter? That's confusing. And that's okay. It's actually pretty useful in my experience to be confused. But here we want to say we see things as imaginary because we are collectively involved and individually in every moment we're involved in the process of creating what will be experienced. That is to say, imagined. So I will talk about that a little bit more in a minute.

[22:47]

But I just want to make sure you don't run out of the room thinking, this guy's saying that nothing matters, because far from it. I'm going to read you a little passage from this book that I wrote. This is a new translation. This book contains a new translation of Vasubandhu's treatise on three natures, which is 38 verses in Sanskrit. I co-translated it with partner named Wei Zhen Teng, who's a professor at Dharma Drum University in Taiwan, a wonderful, wonderful person. And then the book consists of one chapter of commentary on each verse. So I'm just going to read a little bit from the introduction. Every aspect of what we would conventionally call experience is of these three natures, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensations, thoughts, emotions, and our sense of being a self.

[23:48]

For example, the cobalt blue car that I can see outside my window is of an imaginary nature. Whatever I'm experiencing it to be right now, a memory as I'm currently looking at letters on a screen, or now as I turn my head to look at it again, whatever I think it to be is a construction of habits of consciousness and imagination. I suspect it will take some time for you to consider this a reasonable or useful claim. And so, dear reader, that's why I'm writing this book. That car is also of a dependent nature. Countless conditions that are not the car create the appearance of a car. Reflected sunlight, ocular nerves, supply chain software, oil refineries, the desire for wealth, and so on. This car is also of complete realized nature. It isn't what I think it is. Recognizing that things aren't what you think they are can radically disarm the patterns of your mind that cause you to suffer and cause suffering.

[24:49]

For example, in order to see the car in my normal way, I am usually ignorant of or ignore a vast array of conditions on which the appearance of the car depends. Conditions that cause suffering in this time of climate crisis. These teachings are to help us move beyond this kind of ignorance. The so-called knowledge that white people are inherently superior to black people and the purported fact that race exists as a biological phenomenon were confirmed by 19th century scientific experiments, which have since been disproven. This caused and causes incalculable harm. This knowledge, so-called knowledge, is imaginary. It arises from conditions, and its complete realized nature is that it is not real. And yet, millions of people thought and still think it is true. Although many of us do not, the impacts of the view are pervasive.

[25:55]

It affects where people live, the jobs we have, the wealth we inherit, our access to education, and so much more. They are alive in how I experienced the world. This teaching is here so we may continually grow in our capacity to end and transform harmful patterns of which we are often unaware. By learning to see the three natures of the ideas that maintain harmful systems, we open the way for liberation. The three natures can be misapplied and easily misunderstood. Understanding the imaginary nature invites humility, not grandiosity. It affirms agency. It does not deny experiences. Understanding the dependent nature affirms kinship with all things. It does not deny differences or boundaries. Understanding the complete realized nature brings faith, compassion, and joy. It does not deny suffering. The three natures provide medicine for our ongoing daily sufferings, no matter how small.

[27:02]

In talking about this, and I would argue also in talking about emptiness, one of the principal challenges is to make sure you're not giving people the idea that their suffering and their experience does not matter or is invalid. And so here I'd just like to make clear that although the cobalt blue car from this analysis of the three natures is imaginary, its impacts are important. And what we're looking to see is transform how we look at things. So, for example, with the car, I usually see the car principally as an object to serve my interests. Is it what I want? Does it get me the things I want? So we see it through the lens first of ignorance, through our conceptions, which makes an imaginary nature, and then through the lens of desire and aversion. And this, as Buddhists we know, produces the cycle of samsara. So we can begin to shed the delusion that just sees the objects through this narrow imagined influence that's all based on our own set of needs and conditions and see them from a much broader frame, a systemic frame where we see the dependent nature, where we see the collectivity of all phenomena, and where we begin to act from that sense.

[28:20]

Likewise, with the idea of race, very clearly race has impacts. So it's very common now in anti-racist work to start by acknowledging or investigating the fact that race is not a real thing. So we start, you can look at the historical construction of race as a concept, the building up and the propagating of it as a concept, the use of it in order to engage in transatlantic slave trade and colonialization. And then having done that, you go, okay, we know race isn't real. We've all looked at that. And then someone might say, well, okay, now we're done. We don't have to worry about it anymore. And then the work says, no, clearly there's work to do. We have to work to transform the harms that are caused by this thing, which is imaginary. So the model of that type of anti-racist work directly parallels what the three natures gives you as a model for how to engage in liberative practice. So I'm now going to work through and talk about

[29:25]

EACH NATURE IN TURN, IMAGINARY, DEPENDENT, AND COMPLETE REALIZED NATURES. THE IMAGINARY NATURE, SO WHAT WE'RE SEEING HERE IS THAT IN THIS MOMENT OF EXPERIENCE THAT LOOKS LIKE THIS TO ME, AND FOR YOU, YOU COULD WAVE YOUR HANDS AROUND AND SAY IT LOOKS LIKE THIS TO ME, YOU KNOW, THERE'S LIKE THIS AND THAT, PRETTY COOL. THE ENTIRETY OF WHAT WE are experiencing is only how we're experiencing it and comes through the lens of our own process of experiencing. So the basic way of talking about this in Yogacara is to say that every action of thought, so every thought is an action, every thought, every emotion, and every action with the body plants a seed which will produce a similar fruit at some later time. Sometimes we'll break this up a little differently. It's more common to say body, speech, and mind.

[30:27]

I like to emphasize emotion because it's good to pay attention to how you feel. It's probably affecting how you act. Also, if we're involved in a process of liberation from suffering, I'm pretty sure our emotions matter. So we can say body, speech, and mind. Each action of body, speech, and mind plants a seed, which will produce a similar fruit later, or as I'm saying here, thought, emotion, or bodily action. So the idea is in this moment, whatever you're experiencing is the fruit of previous seeds. And right now you're planting seeds that will produce what is experienced in the world. So the conventional term in Buddhism for describing this is karma. But the standard metaphor in Yogacara texts is seeds and fruit. So important to note that we never know when a seed we plant will bear fruit. So it could be like in the next second, could be next week, could be in 100 years, could be in, or we'll say 20 years, could be at 550,000 years.

[31:32]

We just don't know. But it will. That's the claim of this tradition. Every action that you commit will produce fruit. It always matters. So in simple terms, in case this seems excessively abstract, It's like if you look at someone and you go, that guy's such a jerk and they're always doing the stupid thing. And if they would just do what I told them to do, everything would be good. I know you would never act like that or have that kind of thought. But were it to occur in that moment, thousands of seeds are being planted. Seeds of alienation where that person looks clearly separate from you. Seeds of judgment where you're like, I know better than you and I have the absolute truth. This belief that I have the truth that they don't have. probably seeds of aversive emotion, irritation that are not even seen because we're so caught by the image and the thinking that we don't even turn in and really touch the feeling. So many, many seeds are planted in a moment like that.

[32:35]

Likewise, in that little moment where you just walk up to the person at the store who's going to help you have food and you smile, and maybe they look at you, they're like, argh. But you still smile. And you don't smile too much or try and make them smile. You just give them a reasonable amount of smile like it's okay. In that moment, you plant seeds of kindness, care, of attention to how they're feeling and not trying to control them. Non-alienation, intimacy, non-violence, non-domination. And these seeds will bear fruit. And this is not complicated, right? You just know it's true. You've seen it happen in your household, in an evening, one way or the other. But on the other hand, the idea of the scope of this being so vast might be like, well, that takes a little bit of faith.

[33:37]

Oh, my goodness. What are we doing here? Are we involved in a religious practice? We might be. Yeah, the imaginary nature for creating the world. And, you know, the imaginary nature. So to make this very explicit, the point is that you have power. You have liberative agency. Every sentient being, without exception, at every moment, always has the capacity to do something for liberation. And no matter what, is always doing something that is conducive to suffering or non-suffering. So no pressure. I get a little fired up because I think it's amazing. You know, one of my mentors, Michael O'Neill, once just said to me, your life is not trivial. You know this. You folks know this.

[34:38]

In this place where so much attention is brought. to doing each thing for the liberation of all beings, to just let that aspiration flow through your heart, even when you're brushing your teeth, washing your dishes. That's why it's so precious that you are here doing this. So I can go somewhere else and talk to other people who've never experienced anything like residential practice and be like, yeah, you can bring this right into your house and be embodied. So possibility. Things are imaginary. That means they're possible. Liberation is possible. And they're imaginary. So imagining things is cool. It's cool. You're like, hey, I would like to imagine having a, you know, a thing where we go out in the community and give people sandwiches.

[35:40]

You can imagine that and then it can happen. It's cool. This is not like your imagination sucks. Pretty soon you'll get to the complete realized nature and it'll be great. Well, there may be a little of that in there. So this reminds us of the power and the importance of each moment of activity and of the imaginative capacity of sentient beings. Okay. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the dependent nature. So the dependent nature, you know, sometimes in yoga chara texts, they'll refer to conceptualizing dependence or conceptualizing interdependence, which just means thinking about how one thing depends on other things. So I will take the example of, like, you go to the store and you purchase some broccoli, and you're like, no, this broccoli is mine. Now, you could sit down and you could... analyze the broccoli and be like, wow, think of all the things that make it so this broccoli can be here, which is a lot.

[36:44]

You know, worms, earth, truck drivers, love, people wanting money, sunshine. Amazing. Or you could turn it in and be like, let's analyze the conditions that make me believe I can own things. This is my favorite. Where did that come from? Yeah, let's check it out. So conceptualizing interdependence, it's very useful to just pause and be like, where? Let's just think about some, just a few of the things on which this depends, which of course are vast beyond knowing. Pretty much, I don't know about infinity, but you're not going to run out of things on which each thing depends. So that's a conceptual approach to being more aware of or of the dependent nature of things.

[37:45]

I believe that Zazen in particular, but many meditative practices naturally help us to be aware of the dependent nature of things because there is a quieting of the kind of constant alienating centering of the self that the mind does. This is very common that people come to our then center and they'll sit in the morning. Minnesota's then meditation center is on a lakefront, which is very nice. I'm very grateful. And they'll come back a few days later and they'll be like, wow, I had walked by that lake so many times. And I went out and I'd just never seen it like that. We were just... Like there, together. And, you know, the birds. They have a hard time describing it. We have a hard time describing it, right? Anybody who's, you ever, any folks try and talk about Zen with your family?

[38:47]

Oh! And they're like, what? Yeah. A natural sense of intimacy. The dependent nature is about intimacy, realizing that the apparent self here is completely dependent on the apparent other. And everything within that field is entirely dependent on all the other things. Deep intimacy. So we just, this becomes a felt sense for many people. And it can feel really good. Really good. Becoming more aware of the dependent nature also can be pretty afflictive, though. Because in the broadest sense... To be aware of the dependent nature of things also includes realizing you can't be separate from any suffering anywhere, which sounds like a lot. I'm not suggesting you just try and like, can I possibly take in every, no, that's not what it's about. But you see that that separation is always imaginary because everything is bound together.

[39:51]

And that can be hard. And, you know, we see this in processes. If you think, for those of you familiar with the ecological work of Joanna Macy, She uses this as kind of the starting point. She says you have to look at how we are actually part of the process by which all these species are going extinct and harms are being done. And it's painful. As you move closer to seeing that systemic harm, suffering occurs. So it can be really hard. And likewise, you know, it's like, you know, if you're like a white guy like me with a female spouse, And they come in and go, you know, you're just kind of coming with this privileged framework and like, could you just do the dishes? Oh, me? I thought the patriarchy was those bad people over there. I'm part of this. People point out that we're part of these systemic harms. This can be hard.

[40:52]

A lot of anti-racism work that I do with a lot of white people involves just Being able to acknowledge that we're part of it. We're part of it. But here's the cool thing. Part of it. And we're imagining it with the world, which means we have power to do something. And that feels good. Instead of pretending you're not a part of something, that you are. To just realize it's true and then say, I can make an offering. So sometimes the process is painful. But ultimately, so much more liberative to just realize, I have agency here. I'm not just a victim. It's not fun. How many people in this room, you don't have to raise your hands, opened up the news within the last few weeks and just thought, it's too big. I can't do anything. I did all my voting. I showed up for the things. I went to the things. I did the meetings. I studied the stuff. I've been working on this for 40 years.

[41:54]

I've been working on this for 50 years. And it's still terrible. People have literally, literally died for liberation from certainly racism in the United States. And still, right? I thought we were making so much progress around transgender rights in this country. And now, ah, feels like we're going backwards. Anguish. And yet, I've let it in. Oh, wait a minute. can do something. Yeah, I can't fix it, but I can do something. So, yeah, I'm going to read something about the dependent nature. It may be useful to know before I start reading that I am a recovering alcoholic and drug addict.

[42:56]

I've been sober for five minutes. Just kidding. That was a terrible joke. I don't know what I'm doing. I've been sober for a long time and I'm very grateful. Deeply grateful. We don't passively receive the reality of the world through our senses and then respond to it. The world we experience is created. It is the active cognition of seer and seen. That's from the text. The root text, the active cognition of seer and seen is what we experience. Our life is created by our karma and we create karma in every moment. We have the power to plant seeds that will create a better world. This body of teachings emphasizes the impact of each moment of intentionality. Our power lies in the quality of heart and mind we offer to the moment. Why do I think this worldview is more effective than materialism for healing our suffering and freeing us from collective modes of violence, oppression, and destruction?

[44:02]

I will answer with some lines from a Chinese Chan nun named Bao Chi, who wrote, The vastness of karmic consciousness is hard to prove, but when Mr. Zhang drinks, then Mr. Li gets drunk. Sometimes I get a call or I see an obituary telling me that another friend of mine has died from addiction. I've lost a dozen friends so far, and I can never know what part my enabling of their intoxication played or the impact their deaths and addictions will have on future generations of their families. The web is too complex to map with materialist tools. I can never know the impact of the thousands of hours I've spent working with addicts in recovery either. I have witnessed the awakening of so much freedom. One of Bauchi's inspirations, the great Chan Nun Miaozong, wrote, When outside the diamond door he glowered, inside the stable the wooden horse's face turned red.

[45:10]

In the verse above, there is no physical connection between the man's glower and the wooden horse's face, and yet there is reaction and connection. We cannot ultimately know when or where the results of any karmic seed will manifest, but manifest they will. Miaozong wrote her lines in a Chan compilation she created in the 12th century. But could she have known that in the 17th century, Baoqi and her Dharma sister Zhukui, looking to revive the rarely recorded teachings of a female master of Chan, would pull them from obscurity and write their own commentaries? Or that Beata Grant in the 21st century would again revive them in English? I believe that buying a chunk of an animal killed thousands of miles away, or offering a caring smile for a person on the street, as well as each tiny moment of anxiety, desire, or compassion you cultivate has an impact on every living being.

[46:10]

I can't measure it. Miaozong says, the wooden horse's face turns red. A wooden horse is a classic Buddhist metaphor for something that has no reality or causal agency, like the horns of a rabbit, a wooden man, or a stone woman. Miauzang invites us into a worldview of mystery, where we don't know or see what is ultimately real, but where an angry glare causes suffering we can't calculate, where a smile has radiance beyond the limits of our knowing, where our actions really matter. All of this isn't real. but it's as real as it gets. So everything is imaginary, dependent, and complete realized nature. It's already real, as real as it gets. Complete realized, paranyishpana, the connotations of the Sanskrit term have to do with wholeness. Sometimes people will say fulfilled.

[47:13]

So the idea is the complete realized nature is what Buddhas see. I would say you could sum up what makes a Buddha a Buddha by saying a Buddha is a sentient beings that does not suffer, does not cause suffering, and sees what is real. And it is in seeing what is real that the capacity to not suffer and not cause suffering is manifest. And the thing is, the literature we have about Buddhas is of a person who hung out with other people. So they didn't, like, go somewhere else. where they saw some real stuff and didn't suffer. They were right here in the same shared environment, seeing what is real and not suffering and not causing suffering. Now, I don't know if that's absolutely true, but this is the literature we have, and this is the ideal and the picture Buddhism gives us. So the thing is, it's possible to see what is real. That's the claim of this tradition. But I'll just say from the three natures framework,

[48:13]

It's already of complete realized nature. You're not seeing something other than the complete realized nature right now. Things already aren't what you think they are. And all the complete realized nature is, is seeing that things as objects that you usually do isn't an absolute reality. They're not the objects that we think them to be, which can be like manipulated, controlled. So in talking about, you might think, hmm, that seems so crazy. I'm telling you, you're already in the Buddha land. Oh, and you're already Buddha. But you probably hear this in here all the time because this is a nice Mahayana place. So the nice thing is that free natures give us some nice, for people who enjoy logic, you can be like, oh, there's a logical argument for whether that's true. It can kind of be a little satisfying for some of us who, deeply naturally religious.

[49:16]

In talking about the complete realized nature of things, in many texts in Buddhism that come out of the Yogacara tradition, we see talking about the complete realized nature of the phenomena that would be conventionally understood to be the self, and the complete realized nature of the phenomena that would be conventionally understood to be other. I'm not just saying self and other because... The complete realized nature is that they're not really self and other. Anyway, at the end of Vasubandhu's 30 verses on Consciousness Only, the last line says, this is the inconceivable, wholesome, unstained, constant realm. The blissful body of liberation, the Dharma body of the great sage. And I can only gesture with my own limbs. But if you were chanting the text, you could point out to the apparent external world and say, this is the inconceivable, wholesome, unstained, constant realm. And this is the blissful body of liberation, the Dharma body of the great sage. And you might think, boy, for a Dharma body that's blissful, it sure feels sore and grumpy. That's okay.

[50:22]

We're not denying the imaginary nature. We're not denying the way you experience it as having its here-ness, its here-ness. So at the end of the Song of Zazen, Hakuen paraphrases, The last line of the 30 verses unconscious is only. He says it a lot simpler. He says, this very place is the lotus land, this very body, the Buddha. Dogen Zenji, in the Phukans of Zenji, when he's like, now I'm going to tell you why and how to practice Zazen, begins thus. The way is originally perfect and all pervading. How could it be contingent on practice and realization? The true vehicle is self-sufficient. What need is there for special effort? Indeed, the whole body is free from dust. It is, who could believe in a means to brush it clean? It is never apart from this very place. What is the use of traveling around to practice? It's the same message. Oh, complete realized nature is here.

[51:27]

And that's why you should practice. Well, I wouldn't have thought of that myself, but I found it pretty inspiring. I found it pretty inspiring. So I'm going to read two short passages from this book related to the complete realized nature of the phenomena conventionally understood to be the self, and then the complete realized nature of the phenomena conventionally understood to be other. And that will conclude my talk. This is from a chapter called Already Buddha. When I came to Buddhist practice, I was seeking something else. I sought an escape from the anguish I experienced. My therapist told me it was the anguish of trauma from the past reproducing itself. My psychiatrist told me my brain didn't process serotonin properly. My addiction recovery friends called it defects of character, self-will, run riot.

[52:31]

My Buddhist studies called it afflictive karma. All these ways of looking at it have their utility, and I am deeply grateful for all who have supported me in finding the wondrous, joyful existence of today. When we suffer, when we see the suffering of others, it is right to seek wellness, to seek something else. However, it is also true that there is not something else, that you and I are not and cannot be broken. For if there is brokenness, there must be a wholeness that is elsewhere. This is a duality, and duality is just a habit of mind. And regarding the complete realized nature of the phenomena conventionally understood to be other, or we could say of where we're at, Recently I heard a talk by a Dakota elder named Bob Klanderud.

[53:33]

He spoke of the total kinship of all life. He told us that the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota rivers near my home on U.S. occupied Dakota land is called Bedote. For the Dakota, Bedote is the origin of the universe, the land of Genesis. In his words, it is Eden. He asked us, Now that you know you live in Eden, how will you choose to live? I thank you for your kind attention. Yeah, I think this is a nice time to hear some other voices. HAVE A FEW MINUTES WHERE PEOPLE CAN SAY THINGS. QUESTIONS ARE QUITE WELCOME OR IF YOU HAVE REFLECTIONS, THOSE ARE WELCOME TOO. THERE'S A LOT OF PEOPLE, SO IT'S NICE TO KEEP YOUR, IF YOU, TO BE TERSE SO THAT THERE'S ROOM FOR MANY VOICES.

[54:38]

AND I'LL SAY ANY KIND OF QUESTION THAT RELATES TO THIS IS COOL. SO IF YOU HAVE VERY TECHNICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT, YOU KNOW, THE EVOLVING NATURE OF THEORIES OF DEPENDENCY FROM THE POLYCANON LITERATURE INTO THE Later yoga char attacks. That'll be a lot of fun. We can have a good time with that. I'm not saying I'll know a good answer, but you can ask those questions. But you may also just be like, oh, man, every time I go to work, I want to throw my laptop out the window. How does this help? So, you know, wherever you're coming from is appropriate. Yeah, go ahead. And I have the microphone, so... Yeah, I've got a question about something that happened yesterday. So I was, it was my responsibility to teach something, and I was teaching about a problem. And in teaching about a problem, I recreated the problem that I was trying to teach about.

[55:45]

Could you unpack that in terms of the three natures of, you know, WHAT'S REALLY REAL AND WHAT'S POSSIBLE AND HOW IT'S RELATED AND GIVE ME A FEW CLUES ABOUT WHAT ON EARTH I SHOULD DO NOW. THE TEACHING THING IS OVER, BY THE WAY. JUST SAYING. BUT IT WAS HERE. RIGHT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU FOR THAT QUESTION. AND FOR THE HUMILITY EMBEDDED IN IT. WELL, YOU KNOW, I CAN JUST SAY THERE'S A KIND OF AN IRONY TO A WHITE MAN SITTING UP IN FRONT OF EVERYONE HOLDING FORTH ABOUT HOW TO DISMANTLE PATRIARCHY AND RACISM, RIGHT? SO YOU CAN JUST SEE IT'S INHERENTLY THESE PROCESSES ARE PROCESSES. SO I DON'T KNOW THE PARTICULAR SITUATION, SO I'LL JUST SAY A COUPLE THINGS AND THEN WE'LL SEE WHAT OTHER PEOPLE WANT TO ASK ABOUT.

[56:51]

You know, the idea of the imaginary nature is the amount of conditioning that produces our moments and our response to them is vast. And our ignorance is really amazing. And so even as we really try to dismantle something harmful, it's very likely that we'll make some more harm. It may be in almost exactly the same way we're trying to take apart. Maybe I'm dodging your question a little bit, but like a lot of times I'm working with people and students and they have to learn how to let the anger that's in their bodies be manifest as an emotional state. And then they have to work to like sort of honoring that and then being more assertive. And in that process, oftentimes it's like, wow, they start to feel the emotion. That's painful. And then they're like, no, I'm going to be more assertive instead of a pushover. And then they're really mean. So the process can be messy.

[57:55]

The process of liberation is it's not like, oh, we're going to get it right. And this is the beauty is that it's a process. And that's this set of teachings really reminds us that liberation is not an end point and it's not a central point. There's not a person who becomes liberation so much and there's not some other place. It's always process. That's always relational. And so, of course, it's like, oh, we made the mistake. And then it's like, oh, but we're still in relationship yet again. Like right now, I just realized, someone just pointed out that I did this thing. And here I am. And then it's like not about an absolute truth that like, oh, if we don't reproduce harmful power dynamics, we'll have it all fixed. And this is how you do that. It's an endless process of looking at the systems and working with people and working with our own hearts. And yeah, so there's some thoughts. Thank you. THANK YOU. I JUST WOULD ACKNOWLEDGE IF YOU'RE ONLINE, I THINK YOU CAN ASK QUESTIONS AND WE WILL HEAR YOU.

[58:57]

PROBABLY NEED TO RAISE YOUR HAND OR SOMETHING, YEAH? OKAY. OTHER VOICES. OH, I SEE A HAND, YEAH. THANK YOU. THAT WAS GREAT. I WAS COMPLETELY WITH YOU RIGHT UP TO THE PART WHERE YOU STARTED TALKING ABOUT seeing reality. I mean, my sense is that lots of jaw-dropping, surprising, outrageous experience is possible, but that... And that it shows... REMARKABLE THINGS ABOUT HOW WE EXPERIENCE THE WORLD, BUT MY SENSE IS THAT SEEING ACTUAL REALITY IS KIND OF OFF LIMITS OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

[60:05]

AM I GETTING THAT WRONG OR WHAT DO YOU THINK? WELL, I THINK IT'S A REASONABLE VIEW TO HAVE. AND I THINK I'LL ARTICULATE SOMETHING ABOUT THIS TEACHING THAT'S Yeah, I'm just going to dig a little bit more into the idea of the complete realized nature. You can have whatever view occurs with you as I say that. So one of the things is I think people will think when we say you're seeing complete realized nature that it's an objective reality. But it can't be because if it's an object, then it's separate from a subject. So it is the seeing of the non-duality of a duality. is seeing what's real. And so I think the other thing that makes this challenging is if you have a kind of a Western philosophical idea of what it means to have a reality, that means it's a sort of an absolute or an objective reality. What we're saying here is what it means to see what is real is to not suffer and not cause suffering.

[61:07]

So Buddhism, Buddhist philosophy does not, when it talks about things like what's real, it's not interested in the same questions that we ask many of us grew up with in other cultural contexts outside of Buddhism, which you may have grown up with Buddhism, but maybe impacted by other things. The point is to see reality is to be free from suffering and be a liberative force. That's what it means. So it's a different way of thinking about what it means to see reality. Whether that is absolutely possible, I don't know. I have definitely not got this figured out. But it points to something about the process that I don't have to wait for myself to be different or wait. The complete real life nature says I don't have to wait for you to be different or me to be different to have total peace in this moment. And that is something that is vivid to my experience and that other people manifest.

[62:09]

People who are in situations that are from an objective framework look absolutely awful and will be like, And yet for me, it was total peace and engagement with the world. So again, I may not have quite resolved your question, but I played with it and I appreciate it. Can I add one thing? How is that just different from continuous practice? It kind of depends on what you mean by continuous practice, but insofar as continuous practice that is rooted in a profound sense, THAT YOU'RE NOT PRACTICING FOR SOMETHING LATER AND THAT THERE'S NOTHING BROKEN, THERE ARE NO OBJECTS TO BE CONTROLLED OR FIXED, THEN IT WOULD BE THE SAME. THANK YOU. YEAH, SOMEONE OVER HERE. Thank you.

[63:15]

I really love these teachings a lot. And one of the things I think I have a tendency to do is spiritually bypassing. And you'll talk about being a Buddha is when you're not suffering, you're not causing suffering, and you realize complete nature. Sometimes, I don't know, maybe I'm fooling myself. Maybe there's total delusion wrapped around that and what I actually think is happening. And I just wanted to ask you how one can... Kind of practice with that, that spiritual bypassing or being delusional about what it actually is and trying to overcome suffering in a way that's actually not overcoming suffering. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. It's a good idea not to think you've got it all figured out. So one of the things is just to continually be seeing all three natures. So if you think, oh, I'm over here, I'm just hanging out in the complete realized nature. I don't know, probably not, because then it's an object that you think you're seeing.

[64:20]

So just realizing that it's like, yes, this moment is created by all these conditions. It's not what I think it is. That seeing that it's not what you think it is, is that's the step towards the complete realized nature. If you're suppressing your emotions, a good thing to do is just really... I would say one of the simplest practices for avoiding this is make sure that in your daily life and within your meditation practice, you are deeply attentive to emotional states. Because people can just suppress those or hide them or ignore them. And that gives you that sort of mental framework where you can be like, I'm just dwelling in the Buddha land. But if you really make that commitment to know the body and the emotions there, it's very hard. FOR THAT TO HAPPEN, I THINK. BUT IT'S A GREAT QUESTION. I WOULD SAY JUST AN ONGOING ONE TO STAY WITH AND KEEP TALKING ABOUT WITH ALL OF US. THANK YOU. I HAVE A QUESTION FOR THE ENO.

[65:23]

DO WE GO TILL QUARTER AFTER OR 20 AFTER? 20 AFTER. OKAY, GREAT. YEAH, WHOEVER. OKAY, SO I'M AT WHAT WOULD BE MY HAPPIEST PLACE. ONE OF MY HAPPIEST PLACES ON EARTH AT A DAY GIANTS GAME WITH A FRIEND WHO I'VE GONE TO 100 GIANTS GAMES WITH. AND SHE'S REALLY CRANKY LATELY. SHE'S FINDING THE NEGATIVE IN EVERYTHING. SHE DOESN'T LIKE THE WAY THEY SING THE NATIONAL ANTHEM. SHE DOESN'T LIKE, YOU KNOW, I MEAN, SHE JUST FINDS, AND I MAKE THE MISTAKE OF SAYING, Carol, you're creating your own suffering. You're doing add-on suffering. She hates that. She's like, hits me with her something and says, you always say that. I hate that.

[66:24]

That's putting the blame. That's judging. So at the end of the day, I'm like, well, that was fun, but you sure were cranky. And so she emails me that night and says, I really like being with you because I can be cranky and you won't hit me in the head because her father used to hit her. But I see it all the time. Why do I see it in her and not me? I try to with this creating your own suffering. This is supposed to be our happiest place on earth. The Giants didn't score. That was a problem. It was a six to nothing game. But still, we used to You know, just be glad to be there. Be glad to. And it's like she's just finding so many negatives. And I want to have a good time and I want her to have a good time. Anyway, it was just and now I don't want to go to another game with her.

[67:24]

I will. And will I just keep my mouth shut? Is that maybe at least one time to try that? I think I'm going to try and pull three things out of that. One, just the, oh, someone tells you, I like being with you because I can be cranky. We need to be seen. The imaginary nature is about seeing how we are, to stop and just be like, ah, this is how I came to Zen practice. I came to the Zen practice and just sat in the Zendo and cried a lot. That's what had to happen. There needed for me to be that space. To just sit in front of my teacher and be an utter disaster. It transformed my life to have someone who's like, I will just sit here with you. I'm not fixing you. I don't have the answer. Powerful. So one. Yeah, we can do this.

[68:26]

Two. Yeah, we got to make a choice. You know, it's like I got people who are really grumpy and some of them I'm like, I'm not going to hang out with you because I just see how reactive I get and it impedes my ability to really be well and do the work I want to do. So we can make those choices and it can be hard. Or maybe you just like do a little less or whatever. So I think we just call that boundaries. But boundaries are important and valuable because the idea is we can make choices. We don't have to just be like, Because this objective reality is absolutely true, I have to do that. You're cranky, so I have to be upset. It's like, no. I'm perceiving crankiness, and I have a choice. And the crankiness is my perception, by the way. Lastly, on this one, I'll say one of the things that I think is most beautiful and amazing about the Yogachara framework is the emphasis it puts on the diversity of beings.

[69:29]

everybody's moment is like whatever their conditioning is making, and that matters. So it's not like kind of focusing on trying to access this objective external truth and then convince people how to do it the right way. You say the way you're perceiving the world, I'm trying to understand that. This is how I'm perceiving the world. How can I relate to you in a way that gets us more free? And so that... COMES DOWN TO INDIVIDUAL PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS, BUT ALSO VERY MUCH TO SYSTEMIC WORK WE DO. AND THAT'S SOMETHING YOU SEE IN THE KOAN LITERATURE, THESE REALLY DIFFERENT APPROACHES AND MANY OTHER KIND OF THINGS THAT EMERGE AFTER YOGACARA AND BUDDHISMAL. THANK YOU FOR THAT SHARING. I THINK MAYBE WE SHOULD WRAP UP. WHAT DO YOU THINK? PROBABLY ONE MORE QUESTION, SHORT ONE. I know there was a question online. I wonder if we could go to that person.

[70:35]

Hello, I'm Griffin. I'm having a medical situation where I'm temporarily confused. And the confusion is very convincing physically and emotionally. So it's fearsome, makes me afraid. But at the same time that I feel the confusion as true, I feel the fear as imaginary. And really seeing how that imaginary fear isolates and separates me. And also becoming aware that there is help from a completely realized... And this is where my words end. Reality or, you know, a place from which help comes, which is not the fabricated self. So that's sort of my dilemma.

[71:36]

Well, I'm sorry to hear that you are ill. You don't sound confused to me. You know, this being able to just... not cling to our fears or whatever, and maybe just bring some attention and touch the emotional state itself with attention. It doesn't have to be some special kind of attention, just I'm noticing you. It's very powerful. And if for whatever reason you're able to let in that the vastness of our connection with the world is support, well, that's a good thing. We need to feel support. We don't want to feel like little bumps bobbling around on the surface of a ball. We're part of the ball. It's pretty good. It's a beautiful ball. It's got all kinds of other bumps on it. So I hope you can just let in that support both in your heart and hopefully I'll let in when people are able to help you.

[72:47]

KNOW THAT THAT IS AN ACT OF GENEROSITY. SO THANK YOU FOR THE REFLECTION. AND I THINK THAT WILL CONCLUDE MY REMARKS FOR THIS MORNING. I'M REALLY GRATEFUL TO BE WITH YOU AND REALLY GRATEFUL FOR ALL YOUR PRACTICE. THANK YOU. Thank you.

[74:01]

Good morning again, and thank you all so much for being here. My name is Kay. I'm the head of the meditation hall, and I'd like to share a few announcements. Please come and join us for meditation. Our zendo is open in the mornings and in the evenings, 540 a.m., 540 p.m. Please come and join us and sit together. this afternoon.

[75:55]

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