I vow to taste the truth of the Tathāgata's words. Good evening. So these thoughts I have brought in here tonight are a little wet on the paper still. So please forgive my inconsistencies and false claims. When you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and does not look any other way. But the ocean is not round or square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel.

[01:04]

It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. All things are like this. So some years ago I was the Eno here at Green Gulch Farm. And one of my jobs was to invite the speaker for the Wednesday night Dharma talk. And then one week came and I didn't have anyone. Everyone was gone, kind of like now. They were all away. So I called around to the other Zen centers in the Bay Area and I finally got Mel Weitzman on the phone. And I was very relieved. And I said, Mel, can you please come tomorrow and give the talk? And he was quiet for a minute and he said, You do it. You give the talk. And I was quite stunned.

[02:09]

I think I still am quite stunned. So I said to him, I don't give talks. And he said, You do now. So this is our Zen training program in action right here. So anyway, I'm here again today and wondering how this all comes to be. And I have had people say to me, Oh, it's so comfortable for you, isn't it? Sitting up there giving talks. You seem so confident and brave. They say things to me like that. But it's not true. It's not true at all. But I wanted to tell you what it is like to sit up here and face you. It's actually unfathomable. It's like being on a boat in the open ocean.

[03:16]

And I was thinking that it's just that way for you too. Each meeting with someone else, with another person, eye to eye, heart to heart, human to human, is unbelievable, undefinable, unimaginable, ungraspable, and I don't think it's any different when we face a mountain or the sky or the great blue sea. What I wanted to talk about tonight is what we do in the face of our enormity. In modern psychological jargon it's called projection.

[04:20]

You know, we make up something. And most of the times our stories are rather quick and skillful. We don't even notice how good we are. I saw this film, Phantom Menace, and Darth Maul has a dual lightsaber. There's a light coming out of either end of this weapon. You know, it's kind of like us. I like it, I don't like it. It's good, it's bad. It's pure, it's impure. More, less. Right, wrong. Easy. It's very easy. We very quickly chop up reality into tiny little pieces. So recently I had a very prolonged experience of my imaginal life in company with some good friends, a circle of women that I have been practicing with for many years. And this is a true story I'm going to tell

[05:26]

about a good friend who became very ill, a member of our circle. Actually, she's a woman who lived here for a little while. About a year ago, during our winter practice period, she was sharing a room with Lee Lip. Her name is Carolyn Williams. And in fact, Carolyn's doing very well right now, for those of you who remember her. But she's had quite a journey, and all of us who care about her went along on her journey. She left the practice period because her heart is what we call a bad heart. It relies on a pacemaker for her to be living. And for some reason her heart wasn't functioning well. So when this happens, your lungs start to fill up with water. So for a long time she was really suffering with this condition.

[06:32]

So all of us who care for her asked her to please get another opinion, to see some more doctors, and she did that. And eventually had open-heart surgery to repair two valves that they suspected were leaking and causing her decline. So the surgery went very well, and Carolyn looked great. She was pink and breathing and happy and seemed to have a new healthy life. And we all felt great. We did it. We'd saved Carolyn and we celebrated. And then about two weeks later she started to fall. She spiked a fever and within eight hours she was in the intensive care unit with a tube down her throat and lines in her arms and a feeding tube and morphine.

[07:34]

Her kidneys were failing, her heart was failing, and she was delirious. And we all felt terrible, and we blamed ourselves. How could we have changed things, made her get this surgery? So what I began to notice as the data on Carolyn kept in, and we all have email and all that, so every day we knew exactly what her temperature was and how she was doing. And the more information we got, those of us close to the information, I noticed we began to make up stories about what was best for Carolyn. And it was really a very profound experience to be so close to someone

[08:36]

who was in such a desperate struggle for her life and to be talking about it. Like, well, maybe she's telling us she wants to go. And that's why she pulled out her lines. She's telling us to let her go. And then some of us were saying, well, we don't know what it means. And then we'd switch camps. Oh yeah, I guess it's right, she wants to go. Back and forth and back and forth. And I know that many families and all of us go through this with friends at some point in our lives, these dilemmas, and that actually the consequence of those conversations can bring about actions that will end the person's life. It was very close there, decisions that the family could have made about her life. And I want to admit, too, that I at times wish that someone would do something to either end her life or that she would get better

[09:39]

so that my suffering about her would stop. But no one did. Now, none of us wanted Carolyn to be suffering, and of course the First Noble Truth is that there is suffering. And all of us wanted something to happen, either that she would quietly die and end her suffering or that she'd get better and end her suffering. We wanted that. And the Second Noble Truth is that the cause of suffering is wanting. So with these simple ingredients of wanting and ignorance and suffering, we created a whole world around Carolyn. We strategized and we planned and we prayed and we ventured and we decided many, many things.

[10:41]

And meanwhile, Carolyn simply got well. It's a miracle. Truly a miracle. So the Buddha was on to projection from the very first moment of his awakening because that's exactly what he woke up from. He woke up from stories. And I was thinking that when this talent we have for projection is turned this direction, then what we create is what we call the self, me. And when this talent for projection is turned in this direction, so we imagine, that's the world. So we can do this.

[11:45]

I think what's not so usual for us is to identify ourselves with this process of creation. Generally we put the blame outside, on God or goddess or our parents or society or something. I didn't make myself. I didn't ask to be born. It's kind of unusual to accept the idea that even for a moment that I'm actually what I mean by God or goddess. I'm the creator. This is my world. It's flowing out of my imagination. And that in fact everything that comes in contact with my eyes and my hearing, my smelling, my hands, my mind, comes to life through the contact with me.

[12:52]

That's like God. Isn't that God? I bring the world to life, to my life. And I think it's this very act of projection that clouds our view of how wonderful this truly is. It's the clouds over the moon. We don't see the magic of what we are and what we do. The stories get in the way. So I wanted to read you a passage from the Dhammapada, which is one of my very favorite passages in all of Buddhism. This is the first verse of the first chapter. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow.

[13:55]

Our life is the creation of our mind. If a man or a woman speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows them as the wheel of the cart follows the beast that draws the cart. What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow. Our life is the creation of our mind. If a man or a woman speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows them as their own shadow. He insulted me. She hurt me. They defeated me. He robbed me. Those who think such thoughts will not be free from hate. He insulted me. She hurt me. They defeated me. He robbed me. Those who think not such thoughts will be free from hate. For hate is not conquered by hate.

[14:56]

Hate is conquered by love. This is a law eternal. Many do not know that we are here in this world to live in harmony, and those who know this do not fight against each other. So the history of Buddhism, or of Zen, if you will, is really a string of stories about individuals who have entered into the dark forest of their own imaginations and found their way out. And I think of all the many things that are sad in this world, one of the sad things is that not everyone finds their way out. I years ago found a book on Korean shaman women. And in the villages, in the mountains of Korea,

[16:00]

when a young woman loses her mind, which can sometimes happen to young women, they give her a hut and beautiful clothes and delicious food, and then they wait outside. And if she finds her way out, she becomes the shaman for the village. And if she doesn't, then she becomes, like all such women around the world, a bag lady who wanders utterly mad. So I think that the Zen teachers are really kind of like this. They're people like us who were very lost, very confused, and found their way out. And the way you can spot them is that they're usually hanging around, either shouting or whispering or emailing encouragement

[17:05]

to people who are still in the dark. And they say things like, just sit still, or try turning left, or fluff your cushion, things like that. Shakyamuni Buddha was the first Zen teacher, and his disciple was Mahakasyapa, the great ascetic. And Mahakasyapa, by and by, came to have the same mind as his teacher, the Buddha. So that when the Buddha raised a flower and blinked his eyes, Mahakasyapa broke out in a smile. And the Buddha said, I have the treasury of the eye of truth, the ineffable mind of nirvana. These I entrust to Mahakasyapa. And the story goes on to say that once you come to know the inner self,

[18:11]

you will find that Mahakasyapa can wiggle his toes in your shoes. So I was thinking tonight that maybe some of you might wonder how you recognize the gateway to freedom, or how you recognize the feeling of the ancestor wiggling his toes in your shoes. And I think it's an okay thing for us to ask here at a Zen center, particularly right now as we're about to enter the practice period, which is our season of contemplation here on the farm. We're ending our season of long days of light and hard work, and we're about to take up the business for which we wear our robes.

[19:14]

This word Zen comes from a Sanskrit word that is pronounced something like jhana, jhana. And jhana means meditative absorption that culminates in the cessation of all dualistic distinctions. Meditative absorption that culminates in the cessation of all dualistic distinctions, self and other, inside and outside, is or isn't. Basically you turn off the light saber. And there are eight of these jhanas described in the old Wisdom Sutras, four of them in association with the Buddha's own enlightenment, the first four. And basically what this is, is that the meditator

[20:26]

follows the teaching in the old texts and through a contemplative process begins to peel away all the layers of their imaginal life, all the projections outward and the projections inward, until there's so little left to experience. And at that point they try to confirm for themselves whether there's anything there that is absolute reality or not. So they're going down into the labyrinth of their minds, looking for the treasure. And I find it very helpful as a meditator to study the old stories of the old yogis, the old adepts,

[21:28]

and what do they say about what they found. It's very interesting. And most interesting is that they're very much like us and they make up stories, lots of stories, and some of them are quite wild and imaginative. I recognize them right away. Oh yeah, I can think like that too. And there are particularly interesting stories around this experience of cessation, nirodha samapati, when there is barely anything perceived. Cessation. Now one thing that's interesting about cessation is that the yogis in fact emerge from this trance to talk about it. So that's an important thing to notice. Cessation is a trance that lasts at most for two or three days.

[22:31]

And then you come back to thinking, pondering, arguing, and complaining. There is in the Brahmajala Sutta a series of refutations by the Buddha, our very own yogi, who refutes sixty-two different views regarding the nature of reality. And half of those are the views of thinkers, rationalists, philosophers, and half of those are the views of the yogis, the meditators. And among the views that he refutes are eternalism, nihilism, materialism, and creationism, some of our biggest, most favorite views.

[23:33]

And what's interesting to me is that the Buddha, in his yogic exploration, failed to verify much of anything at all. And what he says is that all of these claims by others are overstatements of the facts. And that through his insight and teaching, he basically said there is no ultimately real subject, me, and no indestructible essential world, that which surrounds me. In fact, there is nothing substantial whatsoever. That's what he got out of it. No claims at all. So, what's left?

[24:45]

This is from the Diamond Sutra, a description of the imaginal world that we all know and love. This is what's left. As stars, as a fault of vision, as a lamp, a mock show, dewdrops or a bubble, a dream, a lightning flash or a cloud, so should one view what is conditioned, what is created. It's not that we stop seeing these wonderful visions, we just don't believe them. We view them like a dewdrop. So, the main point that I'm wanting to make this evening is that our very own Buddha did not find the culmination of his practice in cessation,

[25:54]

nor did he find the culmination of his journey in some absolute, but rather he found a deep and profound insight into the nature of how we create the world and how we create suffering for ourselves and others. That's what he saw and understood, how it all works. And this young man who became the Buddha was just like us, and that's exactly what he was studying. He was studying us, just the way we are right now. This ordinary, everyday, independent, separate person that we believe ourselves to be.

[26:56]

And fasting and trance and drugs and sex will give you a break from that person. It's true, it really will. But then, he or she comes right back at you again. There they are, the next morning with a terrible headache. And that's just what happened to the Buddha. It didn't go away, the person kept returning. So, finally, on one cold winter morning, what the young man saw was a star. He saw an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, twinkling star in the dark, black sky. And from then on, he wiggled his toes in his shoes, he smiled, and he held up flowers. And this ordinary person that he experienced himself to be

[28:07]

did not go away, but he knew it was a story, and that made him very happy. And that's my story. So I was looking for a kind of closing poem or something, and I found what I think is a perfect story in one of Dogen's classicals called Everyday Activity is the Way. The great master, Zhao Zhou, asked a newly arrived monk, Have you been here before? The monk said, Yes, I have been here. The master said, Have some tea. Again, he asked another monk, Have you been here before? And the monk said, No, I haven't been here. And the master said, Have some tea. The temple director then asked the master,

[29:13]

Why do you say have some tea to someone who has been here and have some tea to someone who has not? The master said, Director? When the director responded, the master said, Have some tea. Thank you very much.

[29:32]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ