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 I thought that this was the last class, but I've decided, if it's okay with staff, to do one more because it's just too much stuff. And I'm not done. with my charts. So anyway, try to do another one before the next holiday. I mean, personal day. Personal day. Okay, so how to make a Buddha. Oh, where is it? Oh, there it is. Make a Buddha. So we practice in the realm of relative truth. I mean, we keep asking these questions back and forth, back and forth, you know, during question and answer. I think that's what's happening.

[01:00]

We're kind of like, huh? What about, what about? So, you know, this is the teaching of how to wake up. Whether we can use the formula or not, you know, and we each have to make our best shot. But how you make a Buddha, there's a cause for making a Buddha, and then there's a Buddha, the fruit. And the cause is understanding realizing emptiness, the ultimate truth. That's wisdom. That's the truth body. And the relative truth, compassion, is the form body. And that's where skillful means, method, practices. So this is the relative truth side, how we appear in the world, how we behave in the world, the practices that we engage in, you know, the everyday taking care of the temple, taking care of each other, and then realizing emptiness. So we This is where we go. We go here. And this is the ramp. I mean, it actually is skillful means. Part of skillful means is to help us to jump off the 100-foot pole and realize emptiness on the way down.

[02:07]

So I did a little drawing here of the path as a mountain. So on this side of the mountain is wisdom, which is the ultimate truth. It's just a half. Ultimate truth is half of the whole. The dark side. The part we can't see. The source. The source of your thoughts. The source of that chanting we just did. Where is that coming from? It's a no-access channel. So the ultimate truth is the source of every moment. Every moment we step into the light of the relative truth, which is all that we can see. It's in the light. So... The ultimate truth, the teaching of the ultimate truth, something we can't see and we want that we think of as some word like enlightenment or realization or freedom or whatever you have in mind. So we head out through the wisdom teachings and at some point these teachings will bring you to an experience of called no self.

[03:10]

You might have had that, you know, it's very common. A lot of new students will have something like that. Kids can have... I think all of us have another time in our lives who've had an experience of the self dropping away, maybe merging with a candle or the ocean or sound or music. Anyway, the self drops off. In our camp, that no self dropping off can be also thought of as a culmination of the first turning practices. So you've basically taken care of your afflictions, you've basically stopped... manifesting so much greed, hate, and delusion, you somewhat purified your mind, and you have now accomplished what's called the path of the Arhat. And you're going to be free of being human ever again. So that can be appealing. Many of us, I think it's appealing for some period of time just to stop the suffering, right? But as you see, that's a little bump on the hill. It's a fantasy.

[04:13]

And there's a trace of that called the trace of no-self, the self of a no-self. And it's palpable. And the monks who were practicing together said, well, I feel an awful lot of no-self coming off of you. So this was thought of as being not quite the complete thing, like too much emphasis of the ultimate side, too much dark, too much non-relative. I don't mess with that. And the old one, you don't look at women, you don't talk to women. That was kind of one hallmark of that practice was no women. Women were dark, right? That's got to be weird. So anyway, so you keep going. The wisdom teachings come along, second turning. No separate self. Everything's back in. This is the recovery of the whole world comes back in because you're not outside of that world. It is what you are. This world is making your life. we're grateful for the light and the women and the children and the dogs and the problems and everything so no separate self and then out of compassion we come down out of this no separate selfness which also can have a trace the trace of the no self no self kind of turtles all the way down

[05:31]

And so out of compassion, you come back into the weeds, back into the village, back home, hang out with people, become more like a, you know, back to the human form and behavior. And still you have this infusion from having been up here in this non-imaginary wisdom, it's called. This is prior to non-imagination. It's wisdom that is imaginary. This is actually non-imaginary wisdom. Bodhisattva. And this is a return to imaginary wisdom, but it's after having this experience, so it's infused. There's something happened to you. It doesn't wash away. Okay? And then what do you do? Well, you send these people back to base camp. That's your job now, is to invite anyone, everyone, to consider the wisdom of entering into this process of liberation. Okay? So that's our story. If we do, if we want to make a Buddha, that might be why you're here.

[06:34]

And so that was the question I certainly want to ask you all. Like, why are you here? And, you know, it's one of the questions we ask on the Paz and Gates interview. That's a relative, you know, that's kind of the relative realm. Like, why are you here? What do you want from being here? But this is actually a deeply spiritual question. What are you doing? What is your goal? And how are you going to get there? And if you don't know what your goal is, how are you going to direct yourself? Or what methods are you going to use to arrive at your truth body, your version of the truth body? So this is a really important question that it's maybe uncomfortable because you don't know. And I'm going to be looking at these guys here. This is the first picture. Lost in the woods? I don't know what I'm looking for. I just know I'm missing it. I don't have it. I'm sure there's a lack. Something's missing. Very painful.

[07:36]

So this is the first ox-cerning picture. Don't know. But you've heard about something really good. It's not just Amazon. It's not just the material playing. You've actually heard about some kind of freedom or liberation from your psychic suffering, from your emotional suffering, from the way you think. So... There's a thing that Zen Center has been using called POP. You all know POP? For strategic planning. What's your purpose? What's the outcome you're after? And how are you going to get it? What's your process? So purpose, outcome, process. So this is the same thing. What's your POP for realizing your goal? So there's a book that some of you may have read. I thought it was a really great addition to the book. to the book club, Buddhist book club, called What is Buddha's Enlightenment? Anybody read that one? Look at it? Open it? Yeah, it's good.

[08:37]

It's... You smelled it. That's a good start. It's a very good start. He knows do that often. Smell things. So, what is enlightenment? He basically says, I'm asking a tricky question. You know, he's a professor down in L.A. It turns out he and I were in college together, and we went on a trip together, and I emailed him a fan letter about his book, and he said, are you the, excuse me for saying so, Nancy Schrader that was in college and blah, blah, blah, and Uppsala, Sweden, as Hawkshow knows, that's how come we're so close, because I was in Uppsala, Sweden for one year. And I am, and he is. And so that was great, you know, so we're going to have a reunion. One of these days. Anyway, Dale Wright says in his book, as I said to you, I think back in the very first class, the path is enlightenment, enlightenment is the path. That's great, but what's the path? So we've been talking about that.

[09:40]

That's what I've been bringing up for these classes is there are these three tourneys. Each of them is a different understanding of what's the path. What's the path to the goal? So what's the goal? If you say... my goal is to become enlightened, if you're willing to go that far, I want to wake up, then we have these different options. There's different pathways to that. But the tricky part is, and I think this is one of the things that I really appreciated about Dr. Wright's book, is that the goal changes as you progress along the path. So what you may have thought was your goal when you were 12 or 18 or 28, or 38 or 70 is really different. I want an easy death. That's my new goal. Gentle, no car accidents, none of that stuff. So my goals are starting to really become much simpler, much less complicated.

[10:40]

So we have these choices about the path. We have differences in methods and lifestyle, meditation techniques, all of which we've been hearing about. different outfits, different ritual texts, teachers, and so on and so forth. So it's kind of confusing. We're in the marketplace of practices and methodology. And then we've been bringing up, what about this Japanese cultural appropriation? Should we be doing that? Uh-oh. Now what are we going to do? Okay, let's get rid of all that. Let's make it more like California. Uh-oh. Well, that's Spanish. Uh-oh. I mean, whoa. Some rocks. Maybe we just have a pile of rocks. I don't know what we're going to do. But anyway, we've got to ask these questions, and they're good ones. I'm kind of making it funny, but it's not funny. It's really important that we don't stop somewhere and grab a hold. Oh, yeah, this is right. This is the right way. We've got the practice. We've got the right outfits. We're doing the right thing. I think these always are changing, and that's what...

[11:43]

this book about enlightenment is about like your goals will change so don't be surprised and also don't grab a hold of a goal and then you know refuse to change when evidence leads you to a different direction you know be flexible that's part of our wish is to become flexible so really the path is more of a spiral you know that goes around and up and down and so on it's not a straight line there's no straight lines you may have noticed that So the path and the goal are co-created. And if you look at the stories of the ancestors, enlightenment itself is not a particular state. No one has ever proven that it's the same thing for each person. So Dongshan hears the Diamond Sutra. And he goes, whatever it is, wakes up. Shakyamuni sees the morning star. He wakes up.

[12:45]

So each one of these examples, there's a different trigger, different entry point. But then they don't tell us so much about entry into what. Now that's the part, the great mystery, entry into ultimate truth. What would they say? It's a knowing. It's a profound knowing of who you really are. So And also I think it's important for us as practitioners not to think that there's just one size fits all, that monastic practice at Zen Center is the thing for everybody. It's like it is not. It's really like everything, baking or counting stars or whatever, it's a vocation. And if you're called to that, that's great. I mean, you'll know it. And if you're not called to it, you may find yourself fighting inside yourself. because this is not the right fit. This doesn't actually fit me. So I think each of you has to discern.

[13:47]

I think of discernment around this practice in the years I've been here to be about five to ten years of discernment. Are you a Buddhist? Are you a Zen Buddhist? Are you a Soto Zen Buddhist? There's all these layers of, is this good for you? Is this a good fit? I heard an amazing story from the Suzuki Roshi, apparently, said to some student who was very upset by the forms and the long sitting and so on, he brought that up in a public lecture, and Suzuki Roshi listened to him kindly, and then he said, well, maybe you should leave. He said, because we're not going to change the teaching or the forms, and it could hurt you if you stay here. I thought, whoa, you know, I had never, I always thought, yeah, yeah, everybody's in. So it was interesting, like, I don't want, It shouldn't hurt us to be here. It shouldn't be painful to be engaged. I mean, there's enough pain already, right, the knees and all that, but it shouldn't be painful to your heart over time that you think you're in the wrong place and that what you're hearing is just off.

[14:54]

You know, probably you might want to keep looking for the right fit. Maybe it's another Buddhist tradition or maybe you're Christian. We've had a couple of folks end up as ordained ministers, Christian priests. which they figured out by practicing Zen. They're very happy in their vocation. Okay. So not only does each ancestor have their own specific trigger, they also expand. By having different triggers, it expands the notion of the path. It becomes wider rather than narrower. Well, there's just this one way you're going to get triggered. There's lots of way. Everyone's going to have their own way. of entering into their own understanding and their own practice and their own contentment with, you know, well, I've gone as far as I want to go or as far as I think I can go. So, like, that's okay. I'm fine. I'm fine with that. All right.

[15:58]

So, I think what this all, what I'm trying to say or part of what I'm trying to say is that there's a lot of permission for each of us to customize our inside here. Not so much outside here. We really do ask us to be more conforming of the schedule, of the ritual, and don't hop in the zendo. That's a kind of unstated rule. So there is a way that we do ask for behavioral conformity as a practice. It's a ritual practice. But mental conformity, please don't. Please let your minds... Let the free reign of your mind to explore the interiority of consciousness. That's what this is all about. Yay. What is mind? Look at that. All kinds of stuff going on there. Yeah, sure. What? I will.

[17:00]

I'm going there. I'm going there. I'm going here, too. I'm headed that way. I'm headed that way. Just do a little warm-up. No straight line. Yeah, no straight line. And this is with notes, right? If I weren't using notes, you guys would be really, it would be all over the map. I was telling Lori that. I said, I don't know how. She went up there with this little piece of paper with three words on it. I'm going, how could you possibly do that, you know? Anyway, it's just... The words are puzzles for me, and that one doesn't belong there, it belongs over there. So spiritual traditions are at their best when both the means of transforming our lives, the practices, this is Dale Wright, as well as the ends, the idealized goals, are actively reconceived and critically scrutinized rather than being held as static truths, inflexible and dogmatic. And I love it. Whenever Christopher nods his head, I know I'm on the right track. That's true. You're my little barometer. Don't be shy.

[18:02]

Spiritual traditions are at their best when both the means for transforming our lives, the practices, as well as the ends, the idealized goals, are actively reconceived and critically scrutinized rather than being held as static truths. There's one way to do it and there's one place you're going, right? Inflexible and dogmatic, thereby missing out on whatever is truly alive for us. So truly alive. We are truly alive. And we're taking on this structure of thinking and we don't want to take it on like bars of a cage. They should be more like, I don't know what, cooked spaghetti or something. But really flexible, loose, edible. So you can... You can eat them. Leaping live into the Yellow River. That's what Dogen said in his death poem. Leaping live into the Yellow River. That's the only way in. The living don't know anything about the dying.

[19:03]

We jump. We're going to jump. Okay. So we are truly alive, most alive in our relationships with others. Unlike the one extreme of narcissist who is in relationship with his own reflection, very sad, he died there loving his father. face in the water. Dengshan kept walking. He said just this person, but then he walked across the stream. He didn't keep staring at his face. Narcissist was known for his beauty and he died admiring himself. It's terrible. The other extreme is those who die disparaging themselves. These are the two extremes that we need to avoid, either self-loathing or just narcissism. Like, oh my God, all about me. So, okay, so once you discern what you want out of this life, out of this practice, then we begin to assess what the elements are that you're going to need to collect, get into your bag of tricks, so that you can go forward in your quest.

[20:06]

You know the word questioning? Quest, right? Question. What's your question? It's going to lead you on your quest. That's kind of nifty. So, you know, at Zen Center, we have four basic elements. And do you know what they are? No, elements. No, we have many more elements than four. Water, fire, earth, air. No. Zazen. Work practice. Study. Sleep. That's right. No, no. Human relations. human relations, social, socialization, how we are together, how we take care of each other. That's really, you know, part of how we understand and how, you know, when the time comes, the dreaded paths and gates, if you're all here long enough, it's really not dreadful. We really love everybody. I'm totally, I'm not kidding. It's just like, oh, there's a wonderful. However, you know, there's these little, little challenge, it's called the challenge column, you know, challenge it.

[21:10]

And then there's the feedback about the challenges, which is even harder. You know, because really, do I have to tell that person? So feedback's not our favorite thing. I did, I have told many of you, maybe I said it to the group too, that one of the things about tea ceremony that is really important is asking to be taught. Every class, you go in and you bow, you put down your fan and you bow to the teacher and you say, please teach me. And she said, my teacher, she says, so I will. Every class. And that's our contract. I have asked her to teach me, and she does. I want to learn what she knows. And it's a tender thing to receive instruction. People don't like to be told what to do. But how about being instructed, or how about being offered suggestions, or how about there's nothing wrong, but there are right ways. There's no wrong ways, but there are some right ways. Helping ourselves to learn how to receive and to give, I hate the word feedback, I like reflection of things that we think might be beneficial is a real skill that I think we all need to cultivate as headons, as Fukutens, as Tenzos, as directors.

[22:24]

It's like, how do we allow the person who is trying to manage the work area to be able to talk to us in a constructive way? It's really challenging. Yes. Yes. Yes. And they're returned. Yes, I will. Yes, I will. Thank you. Yes, that's exactly right. Okay. So, you know, basically, all of this is in the... Buddha's teaching is in the moral sphere. It's not some philosophical insight that's going to make you like the hottest brain in the room. It's really a moral commitment to your kindness and your generosity and your, you know, the... the paramitas, the precepts. It's all about how you take care of other people. That's really the core. Compassion is the core. Wisdom is at the service of compassion, not ever the other way around. Oh, did you notice something about the mountain? It's got a line down the middle. So there's a little problem here.

[23:25]

Little problem. Here's the problem. The ultimate truth and the relative truth are separated from one another. And we've got to get them back together, which is where I'm headed for the Yogacara teachings, because I think that's the great gift of the third turning, is that they're bringing back the first turning, wisdom-based, was focusing on the relative truth as a way of entering into no self, but then it doesn't have this commitment to come back and help other people, like Laurie was saying about Harriet Tubman. It's like, okay, now go get some more slaves and bring them to freedom. Let's make that commitment to risk ourselves over and over again to benefit others. So, you know, these two sides need to conjoin, be brought back together. Okay, so the core teachings that are foundational to Zen, there are two core teachings. One is the Majamaka, second turning, Nagarjuna, Heart Sutra, and the other is the mind-only teachings, which are a little more hidden.

[24:31]

I don't think we chant the mind only, well, maybe the Song of the Jomera Samadhi, which has this pivot, you know, silent illumination. Zazen is silent illumination. You're already Buddha, so just sit there and glow. You don't have to do anything. You can't do anything to become. You can't make a Buddha, you know. It's a becoming. It's a becoming and a realization. It's already there. You just have to realize that. So, you know, the critics of our approach, silent illumination, we say just sitting, they say just sleeping. And sometimes I think that might be true. Are you awake? I don't know. You have to ask yourself. Are you awake when you're in that room? Are you making that kind of engagement with your body and your energy? Are you? Is it empowerment? Are you empowering yourself? It's a challenge because we don't sleep a lot. Okay, so undertaking the study of mind only is useful to note that as a religion, Buddhism is kind of unique because it does not claim that one obtains salvation based on faith.

[25:46]

No, you're not going to get saved because you believe something, but rather on wisdom or true knowledge. So it's because you understand something deeply. That's the salvation. So ignorance is the source of our suffering and true knowledge is the source of our liberation. So we do need this ramp of knowledge. The Buddha was not sitting under the tree blanked out. Images were coming to his mind. He was thinking about them and he came up with patterns like that one and like this one. So the three turnings, this is just a quick review. So the basic problem we have is the self-problem. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. So all the different schools point to the self-problem. This is the problem. It's so tempting to say the other is the problem, but actually this is the problem. And it's just a story.

[26:52]

that we take quite seriously. Huh? What? Mountains. Okay. So this is, again, this is the first wheel turning. This is what the Buddha was studying. Under the tree was the pattern of his mind, how his mind was creating the illusion of a self and of an other and of separation and all of that that was going on. He watched it carefully. He saw army's approach. He saw, you know, beautiful humans approach and ask him to come and play and he saw all this stuff and he didn't move he sat there that was his his response don't move and the mind just kept generating more as you all notice looking at that white wall is there like a little projection stream going on and bringing all those images onto the wall maybe but probably not it's probably you're projecting Your whole life history and the people you're mad at right now or who you're in love with or blah, blah, blah. It's like right onto the wall. And so you begin to get it.

[27:57]

Oh, this is from inside out. I'm projecting. I'm the projector. I'm the filmmaker. So he saw that. He studied the pattern of that. And, you know, there's yikes. The end of that is old age sickness and death. I mean, ignorance leads to this kind of suffering, and around and around we go. So the approach for the first mountains was to basically treat these elements of existence as existent, and to purify your mind of the negative afflictions of greed, hate, and delusion. So that was the first turning, okay? So there was the no-self, which liberates the self, and it liberates us from our afflictions, our unwholesome conditioning, our conditioning. So our unwholesomeness isn't because we're just, I got up this morning and decided to be angry at somebody. It's not my plan. It comes. Where is it coming from? Well, they don't tell you so much about that. This is the consciousness. Number three is consciousness.

[28:57]

And it's kind of a, sort of a vague blob on the wheel. There's not much elaboration. So what's happening with the third turning is the focus is coming back onto this particular point, consciousness, and mapping it out and saying, well, here's an X-ray of what's going on inside your mind. And it's a pretty good one. I mean, I think contemporary neurobiologists would say that's a pretty good map they came up with there. Unconscious mind is really a big mystery for modern scientists to try and figure out. I mean, really, where is third grade being stored? You know? Neurons? Which ones have third grade? Let alone all those songs, you know? Yeah, Heather. What's that? Because they'll get stuck, you know, all through Sashin, Little Bunny Fufu. I had that one. Sorry. Sorry. Gotcha. Seven days.

[30:01]

They did. They did. They did. What was the problem with the Abhidharma story? What was the problem? What was the problem? Yeah, dharmas were real. Atomic theory. So they made a whole elaborate system based on separable elements that existed. So philosophically, it fell apart. I understand. Yeah. But it was their intent. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. They did it. But that was extra canonical. They were like, these are like scholars who are coming up with all these different things. You know, it wasn't part of the, you know, a lot of them are going, well, that's not in the sutras. Satrantaka said, you're not going to find that in the sutras. So there was these different arguments already quite lively going on among those folks too. And they were still on the same track of getting rid of afflictions because they weren't much arguing.

[31:16]

They hadn't kind of jumped into the emptiness thing. So that's why it's called the second turning. It's a revolution. Second Buddha, Nagarjuna. Kaboom! Bye-bye Abhidharma. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the singularity was understood. This idea that I exist as a singularity had to go. So how about five scanners? Oh, how about 18 tattoos? Oh, pretty soon you're like, you know, what are you? You're kind of like a swarm with all the good stuff put in your sleeve. No, I mean put in your presentation and all the bad stuff is hidden behind your back. What year? What year? Christopher, help me out here. Thank you. First century BC. Okay.

[32:19]

All right, so this is the purify the mind approach to the mind. All right? We'll purify it. We've got this messy mind. Let's just clean it up. It's like you clean the carburetor. Let's just clean it up and make it clean. And it kind of works. I mean, we've all been cleaned up pretty well. We're only slightly feral. I mean, we've pretty much gotten trained and been taught some things. So purify the mind. And along comes the second turning. Emptiness, we know about that. So that's what we were talking about. So purify the mind. What mind? No mind. No Buddha. Yikes. That's pretty heavy-duty medicine. That's like literally a revolution from what to what? From relative truth to ultimate truth. So now they've turned these two parts which are now split. So the first journey is looking at the light side where the afflictions can be seen, behaviors and so on. And now they're going like, what are you talking about?

[33:21]

What affliction? Show me your afflictions. Stumped. So they stumped everybody. What mind? No mind. No Buddha. Heart Sutra. No? It's pretty effective as an approach. And so there's the no mountains. So we've got mountains. Now we've got no mountains. And this is Nagarjuna's little diagram. Middle way is that whatever is dependent on the core risen is empty of inherent existence. That, what I just said, is a conventional designation. I'm using language, so I can't get out of that one. That is the middle way. And that's Nagarjuna's explication. And he doesn't... He doesn't make it nothing. I mean, he's talking a lot. He wrote a whole bunch of stuff. Just like Dogen. I don't think Dogen spent all of his time sitting zazen. You know? You don't write the shobogenzo if you're spending your whole day sitting zazen. So these guys thought a lot. They wrote a lot about, you know, the dark.

[34:25]

So, all right, so we've got these two. Mountains are mountains. Mountains are no longer mountains. And here's the third turning. So we go from purify the mind to what mind to mind only. So the thing about mind only is that they're looking at this process of consciousness. How does this work? How does the illusion, how do we create the illusion of something being there in front of us separate from us? What's the mechanism of the fantasy? Let's get interested in how it actually happens. before you cut it off. So this is a rather brilliant approach to practice, which I am totally gung-ho about the third turning. So the tathagata means that which is coming and going. Thus, coming and going. Thus come one, thus go one. There's something happening there. It's not like... Anybody seen the Buddha? He gets up on the first con in the Book of Serenity.

[35:33]

The world only one gets up in the seat and Manjushri points and says, clearly observe, the king of the Dharma is thus. What happens? He steps down from the seat. He's no fool. He don't point. Thus? Thus? Thus? Where's the thus? It's everywhere. It's every time. It's every moment. that which is coming and going. But you can't point at it. If you point at it, you're just left with a finger, with a pointer. Ten of them. So they created this, what I think is a beautiful and messy diagram. Look how neat these guys are. This is like math, right? This is really conceptual. These guys are really conceptual. This is sloppy. It's like, what? This is the mind. And it's organic, moving, processing, You know, just the way we experience ourselves, not static. So I have a bigger diagram in the next class, which I just told you I'm going to schedule, because I realize I can't go through all of this, you know, in 10 minutes.

[36:41]

And it's really wonderful stuff. I'm also going to talk about it during session, because I do want you to hear more about Yoga Tara. It's a really special way to practice and look at things. But basically, basically, see the dotted line? Well, that dotted line is the line that divides our unconscious life. Unconscious. This is unconscious. You cannot get in there. Ever. It's unconscious. People talk about shining the light. You cannot shine the light on the unconscious. It hides. Isn't it, though? Isn't this? Isn't it apparent because this is it? No, you're not. You're looking at a sprout from the aliyah. You're looking at what is conscious in this moment only comes to you through one of these six channels, which is the six consciousnesses.

[37:42]

This is like you learned this in kindergarten, right? There's your eye, your ear, your nose, your tongue, and your body. Those are five. Your senses are receiving sound, are touching table. It comes from the aliyah. That's not the aliyah. There's no aliyah. It's a fantasy. Well, that's fine. You're done. Congratulations. This model is to help people who don't quite. Yeah, right now you stay right there. You need to help us now. All right. So, yeah, see, no one gets out. So this is the eight consciousness model, and it's a fantasy. This whole thing is all done for the sake of helping sentient beings who are saying, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't get what's going on. So, okay, well, do you see? Anybody not see? You see. Okay, good. That's one. Can you hear me?

[38:44]

Yes, okay. Can you smell me? No, I hope not. Anyway, but... You can smell something. We had breakfast, and your body is constantly receiving sensation. So we know these channels. And the interesting one of all is number six, which is the awareness of each of these. So that's number six. It's got its own sense. It's a sense organ, awareness. So my awareness, it's like a little flashlight. If you make a loud sound, like you just did, my awareness goes to the sound. And if somebody holds up a flag, we're always scanning for our sensory input. We smell smoke, really strong smoke that other morning when there's a fire up north. Is there fire? We're really tuned in through these channels to try to figure out what? An idea about what's going on. So this is conscious. We come up with a name. Fire. Smoke. Table.

[39:47]

Sound. Francis. So we make this really fast. We make all of these connectors very quickly, and they're conscious. We know we do that. We can see that. And it's very unstable. Our conscious life is extremely giddy. You know? It's a chomp, [...] chomp. So we have come up with a strategy, evolutionary strategy, called consciousness number seven. So this storehouse... I skipped that one. The storehouse is this big kind of, kind of like the cloud. I mean, it's great we have these analogies now. It's just like the cloud. It's got everything stored in there. Do you know what the cloud is? Anybody know what the cloud is or where it is? Is it in Norway or something? I mean, I don't know. Where is it? Anyway, there's a cloud, and my stuff is stored in a cloud, and so that's just like the aliyah. It has all of the seeds of all of the impressions that have come before it, like a river. It's not like a bag that gets passed along.

[40:48]

It's a river that flows with all the influences of the water that's just passed is being now affected by the water that's coming. So all of the causes and conditions of your present life are what your current life is made of. Current. Like a river. Not like a road. And then your present life builds your life of tomorrow. This is the Dhammapada. What you are today... comes from your thoughts and actions of yesterday. Your present thoughts and actions build your life of tomorrow. Your life is a creation of your mind, just the way you were saying. The conscious part is the only access we have. So because it's giddy up here, we have this, see this little heart? That's our seventh consciousness. Remember, eight consciousness model. Five are easy senses. Six is consciousness, awareness. Seven is this little heart called the lover.

[41:50]

Remember that? And eight is the storehouse. Now, the lover is in love with what? Which self? The giddy self? No. The storehouse. Because the storehouse, unconscious, feels stable. I don't know what I am, but I know I'm something. I got something going on here. I speak French. I'm not speaking it right now, but it's in here. And I can play the clarinet. I can. And, you know, so like where is that being stored? That self, all of that stuff that we have accumulated for our entire lives and our history, family history and everything, our race, our blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, our class, I believe that that's me. And my lover, number seven, I, me, and mine, is completely hooked on this belief in this unconscious existence, which is stable, because it's a story. They're not true. It's a fantasy.

[42:53]

But this is the hook, and this is how the hook works. Okay? So, you know, and then our preferences. Now, some of the stuff stored here, these are called karmic seeds, are really good things, like French or Spanish or, you know, Chinese or whatever else you got in there. guitar, singing, you know, all that stuff, kindness. And then there's also the natsugusta, greed, hate, and delusion, which is all based on the lover because the lover is contaminated by a belief in itself as a separate entity. I, me, and mine. So there are four characteristics to the, this is called manas, technical term, manas. So this is alaya, this is manas. And manas is defiled by a belief, first of all, by ignorance, number one. It does not think of itself as separate. I mean, it does think of itself as separate, that I'm separate.

[43:54]

So that's number one. It's conceited. Either I'm the best or I'm the worst. Either way is a conceit. It's... And it is a self. It's self-clinging. It's holding on to that. I think the fourth one is, I forget it. Kind of like, well, conceited is that one. Yeah, it's in that same, it's in the same selfish, self-interested. It's all about self. And part of these storehouse characteristics are things like, you know, I love rain, I hate rain. And then instead of just saying, I love rain, I say, rain is bad. We generalize our personal preferences into like what we think about the world. You're not a nice person. That's because I have this impression of you. So now I'm just projecting, externalizing my inner world as if that's just so. It's just true. So this is the toxic, you know, it's both the place where our good stuff, our vows and our good things come from and it's where our toxicity comes from.

[44:57]

And it's circulating constantly. These seeds are sprouting depending on the causes and conditions. I do not know where my umbrella is in June. I have no idea. Why not? It doesn't rain. Well, not in California. So we are basically clued in to these causes and conditions which stimulate the sprouting of particular seeds at some times and other kinds of seeds at other times. Does this all sound familiar? Sound like you? Doesn't it sound like you? I thought it was so helpful. It was like, that's me. That's how I go. And this is also where liberation is possible because there are approaches and the Vasubandhu's 30 verses are basically using this model. First of all, they explain to you the nature of consciousness. And then the next diagram I'm going to share with you next class is how we break the code because there's a really great way to break the code.

[45:59]

to distinguish this from the first journey. Yeah. Because in that model, it sounds a whole lot like the Sarvastavadhan. Yes. Like, let's cultivate these good dharmas and let's weed out the bad ones. Let's, like, the mind consciousness as a gardener. Yes, exactly. And how does this not re-inspirate? It does. That's the first 1 through 15 of the 30 verses is you're dealing with afflictions on the very first, on the same basis as the first journey. as though they're there. The second 15 verses is dealing with the fact that those afflictions are delusions. So this is an emptiness teaching at the core. And what it's doing is uniting these two approaches. So we're going to treat the afflictions as they're really happening because they are really making problems for people. And we're going to work on that until we're pretty nice folks. We kind of cleaned up our act. We practice with speech, with conduct, with all of that.

[47:05]

And then we're going to blow it away. But you don't want to blow it away too soon. Because then you might turn into this kind of like not that nice to be around and you don't care. You just downloaded your files. So we want to be careful and we want to use each other as kind of a... feedback loop, like, how am I doing? There's a book on very cautions for the helping professions, people in the helping professions, which is us. We want to help people, right? Careful. So people in the helping professions can get very inflated about themselves. So therapists, doctors, priests, you know, I mean, it's just like all over the news. So there's a very selfishness that can overwhelm you when people admire you. and thank you and pay you and all of that. So that inflation is very hard to not fall into.

[48:06]

And in this book, I think Linda Ruth was having us all read it when she was avid years ago. It's really good. It's not very thick. Anybody remember the title of it? Power in the Helping Profession. Yeah, exactly. What's his name? Adolf Guggenbiel Craig. Guggenbiel Craig. Catchy. Yeah. And it's really good. And basically what he says is that, because he was seeing himself as a victim of that, as a psychotherapist, brilliant, you know. He said, you have to go to your friends and your wife. You have to have your peers. And you've got to say, how am I doing? They're going, not that great. You know, you really seem to be getting a swelled head or whatever. People who really love you and who will be honest with you. So that's kind of back to this feedback reflection. request for each other? Can we bear to let people see when we're getting a little too swollen? Because it's not our stuff. This is the Dharma that we have the privilege of carrying.

[49:10]

We should always acknowledge the author. Yeah. There's so much information coming in to process. That's why she said this. But when is a good time or how will you know if it's a good time to start questioning or start looking at alternate approaches or how will you know if that's what you're doing or are you

[50:11]

running away? Are you trying to push back because you're not being present? But how will you know? Yeah, well, that's why you have a teacher. You talk to them about it very honestly and openly. And, you know, people ask me that all the time. Should I stay here? Should I go? And I say, I'm not going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you. Well, I mean, but what I'm saying is you talk with the teacher, the person you trust. I'm sorry, what did you want to finish? Blind faith. And it would be totally dependent on who's asking the question. Someone else might ask me that question. I'd say, no, you've got to question everything. So whatever thing is challenging you, maybe you can let go for a while of the doubt and just enter in and see what those questions are that you're pushing back against.

[51:21]

What am I actually, can I find one of them and bring it forward? Then you have an inquiry that would be interesting for you also to be able to say, well, here's one. What about this one? Rather than a kind of generalized feeling of I'm not sure if I'm in the right spot. You can't work with that so well. And someone else wouldn't be able to kind of go into the relationship around that sort of vague sense of disease. So if you can come up with particularities, which means you've been looking at the material, that's really helpful. That's sort of like the breadcrumbs into the forest. Well, what about that one? Okay, okay, I'll take another one. What about that one? So... I don't think it'll hurt. I wouldn't say that. Okay. So long, monks. So long, monks. So long, monks.

[52:22]

So long, monks. As I did not... This is Buddha speaking. This is a Buddha speaking. So long, monks. I'm kidding. So long, monks. As... As I did not thoroughly understand things as they really are, I did not declare myself to be truly enlightened. But when, monks, I thoroughly understood things as they really are, then I declared myself to be truly enlightened. Isn't that amazing? You answered your question right there. So as soon as you know, as soon as you know you got it, you can declare yourself. And then what do you do? Go check that. Yeah, go talk to somebody. Go find your friend. Talk to your wife. How am I doing? I don't know, baby. You got a little more little stuff on your lips right there. What? From the Buddha? Yes. So long, monks, as I did not thoroughly understand things as they really are, I did not declare myself to be truly enlightened.

[53:30]

But when, monks, I thoroughly understood things as they really are. Then I declared myself to be truly enlightened. So the primacy is of freedom, that you know when you're free. No one can tell you. I mean, you can check it out. You can say, do you think I'm free? You know, whatever. But your internal reality is really what's at stake here. Like, am I, how do I feel? Am I okay? Good enough? I think good enough's a good standard. That's the one I use. Good enough. I tried the other one. You know, that's like, whoa, no, that's too far. I can't sustain that kind of expectation or idealized outcome. It's just a dream, just a crazy dream. Good enough. Yeah. Can you distinguish the words understand and believe? Can I? Yeah, like when you started the left hand. Yeah, not believing. Yeah, believe, believe.

[54:33]

also I understand yeah I think believe seems to me to have that quality of like I believe in something I mean that's what I think like I believe in the Lord I was trained to that I believe in the Lord God Almighty maker of heaven and earth all things visible and invisible you know so I was taught to believe something and to say I believed it it was a creed and you know I couldn't sustain it I couldn't get rid of it but I couldn't sustain it I don't believe even though I memorized that So that word for me has had some utilization in my life as a child. It was used, I believe. So I believe in Santa Claus. We use that on kids. So I think the word itself has a kind of tricky history, personal history for me personally. If I look it up in a dictionary, maybe I'm okay with it. It comes from Latin for da-da-da. But understand for me is more like knowledge that I'm still growing it. I don't completely understand anything, but I really want to learn and I want to understand myself and you and all of this stuff.

[55:42]

It's like an open feeling rather than I believe in something that's more shut down. Does that work for you? So when you're using a belief or faith, it's more fixed. I am saying that. I think anyone, because people write essays on the opposite of that, right? So it really depends on who you're asking, what you're going to get. And then how do you feel about those two words? I mean, that's really what matters. And so if they're still loose for you, that's fine. I feel like you believe in your understanding. You do? Uh-oh. You think I'm a true believer? No. I think you're right. I do. I confess. I love it. I love my understanding. But it's not mine. It's not mine. It's not mine. This is mine. And I'll claim that. But this is not mine.

[56:44]

This is the beautiful Buddha Dharma that pours down from God knows where. God knows where. I haven't given up on God yet, you know, just in case the insurance policy. Yeah. Okay. A little bit longer. All right. So we know about the three. Oh, the kitchen has to go. Goodbye. Goodbye. Thank you, Kristen. All right. All right. Everyone's leaving. This practice period just keeps shrinking. I'm like, oh, my God. Did you guys ever see the never-ending story where I trail, you know, and it's like the nothing is eating everything, and then pretty soon he's standing on a single grain of sand or something. Everything else is gone. I know. So it kind of feels like that. I go back to Green Ocean. There's a bunch of people up there.

[57:46]

okay what mind what Buddha path oh so this one is the path this okay path no path right no mind no Buddha no path it says that in Heart Sutra this is the path to no path there is a path like just your question there is a path to no path to the end of suffering to the realization of emptiness so that's what makes this you know I think really valuable And in the camps where they make decisions about what's higher, what's lower, everyone goes, well, this is the higher teaching. Emptiness is higher than Yogacara. So Zen tends to kind of inflate the emptiness side, I think, a lot. I never even heard about this stuff. Of course, it wasn't translated. But now that it's translated, I'm like, yeah, this is really a wonderful root system to have included in how we approach practice Zen. And realization.

[58:48]

Catherine? Oh, she laughed! Oh, no! Our source. You know, Dogen does everything. I mean, you know, he's a Lotus Sutra guy, he's a Tendai monk, he's a, you know, and then he says yes and then he says no right away. So... Yeah, time being. Time being. Yeah, we just misread it. I think he's infused with both of those. He doesn't carry the genuine, you know, kind of zen infusions. He's got them all. He read them all. It's like... Little Bunny Fufu. Yeah, he read everything. He's got it all. So whatever his poetic creative outcomes are, they're going to be coming from all those influences. Is that right? Do you see in Dogen a lot of evidence of Yogacara?

[59:58]

It's kind of all over the place. Good. Okay. So... The path to freedom around the self, the problem of self, the path of freedom is selflessness, and the path of bondage is selfishness. Okay? So we want to turn to less self, like get over yourself, you know, in that modern idiom. Get over yourself. You're fine. Now do something, be generous, right? First paramita. Get over yourself and help other people. Be generous. Because that's the antidote to selfishness, is giving, not getting. So we have all these practices that are trying to help us with this self-problem. Okay, I'm just about done. The more that we study our experience... By the way, this... This is about your experience.

[60:59]

This is not a theoretical model. It's a theoretical model because, you know, here it is. But this is about looking at your own experience. I think I said to you, when Reb started bringing this material to us, we read the Samdini Rinchanasusha, then we read the summary of the Mahayana, and then we have, yay, Ben Connolly, which makes everything make sense. So this material, when we started to look at it... I remember saying to Reb, we were walking together, and it was so frustrating because it's like, what? Not more stuff. And I said, you know, I'm starting to be interested in my own mind, like this one, rather than that somehow some understanding that feels external to myself. He said, yeah, well, this is experiential learning. Oh, this is great, which is really why I like it. It's all about, did you hear the bird? I have a quote, Suzuki Roshi quote that I think you'll really like. About that, about basically Zazen.

[62:00]

What happens in Zazen when you hear the bird? And it's about this step in the five ranks, which is Kensho, liberation. Oh, I didn't do the pictures yet, did I? Oh, the verses. The verses and the... You're all leaving. Well, that's not much of an incentive. Come up with something else. He threatened me with something else recently. He just said, you've got to work on your bedside manner or whatever that is. Jisha. Jeez. I know where your buttons are. You do. This is really bad. I need a new Jisha. God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, come on over. All right, this is just... Okay, I will do... I promise you, I will do these two because just the verses I wanted to read, but they do take a little while, and they're beautiful, so I don't want to rush through them. So just to finish, the more we study our experience, the more we see that this idea of an independent entity called myself cannot be detected in actual experience.

[63:10]

So the more you study, the more you actually experience... Where's that self? You get it? You found it? All we can really find is an idea of a controller, of a container, of an owner. This emphasis on an idea of a self is what led to one of the dominant elements of the mind-only school, which could also be called the idea-only school, or it's just a story. So this is the pivot point. of the Yogacara. It's just a story you've got going there. And this is where the liberation is possible. Because stories, there's a, did I tell you the joke about the computer that was made to think like a human? You heard it. Gregory Bateson told it. You may have been there a long time ago. He came in and he said, computers are pretty new. They were not little compacts. It was like roomfuls. And he said, they have a computer now that thinks like a human. And to test it,

[64:12]

They ask you the question, do you think like a human? This computer had little dots of paper along the sides. So a while goes by and the computer responds and pulls out the printout and says, that reminds me of a story. Get it? Think like a human? That reminds me of a story. So humans think in stories. That's really how we know the world. We tell stories. So that's the question. the really key point to this whole process of the mind-only, stories-only. Okay? You are. You are. Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, really for real next time. I'll do the verses, and also I've got two more charts, a bigger one of this, and I will just kind of go a little bit more through the... parts of it and how it moves, and then the one that will free you.

[65:13]

I hope we don't run out of time before that. Oh, dear. You have to come to the next practice period two years from now. Stay tuned. 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.

[65:50]

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