I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words Good morning I want to begin this morning not with something from the East, but with something from the West, namely the myth of Sisyphus, which I'm sure most of you, maybe all of you, are familiar with.

[01:16]

So this is in the Greek tradition, the ancient Greeks told about this man Sisyphus, who was in hell. And the particular hell that he was in, again, as most of you probably know, is that he was condemned to push a rock, a large boulder. His job was to get it to the top of this hill. And he would push it and push it and push it. And then just before he got to the top, the rock would escape his grasp and would go rolling back down to the bottom. And then he had to start over again. Does this sound familiar to you?

[02:23]

So I can easily imagine his struggle and effort and sweat and trying [...] to get that rock up over the top. And then again and again and again the disappointment The discouragement of seeing it go rolling back down. Maybe even, maybe he got angry. Damn it, why can't that rock, why can't I hold on to that thing? If only I had some kind of traction device on my hands, that would do it. You know, some way of holding that rock and getting it up over the top. Maybe he got depressed also.

[03:37]

That rock will never go up over the top. Forget it. Very sad. Upset. So by the chuckle, your chuckle of familiarity, I know that for me this speaks to something very familiar for me and possibly for you also. In your work or your relationships with each other, your relationship with another person, trying to push that rock up over the hill, get it up over the top. And then once it's over the top, then you can just coast. Then things are going okay. A couple of weeks ago I had lunch with a friend, and he asked me, oh, I'm working on, he knows about this, it's actually, it was Paul who I had lunch with.

[04:51]

Iraq experts. So he knows that I'm working myself on a long-term project, something that's very important to me. Paul said to me, how's it going? I said, oh, so-so. He said, oh, I thought you were over the hump. I said, nope, not over the hump. So that was the inspiration for the title of this talk, this talk. This talk is called View from Under the Hump. Is this supposed to be David? I'll make it a little bit lower. See what happens there. And I speak to that in you that feels under the hump sometimes, maybe all the time, maybe most of the time, maybe in some areas, maybe in all areas.

[06:15]

What do we do when we're under the hump? But don't worry. Buddhism has the answer. I'm not going to talk about that today. No, yes I will. So basically there's two ways to go. Well, there's probably more than two, but for the purposes of my talk this morning, I'll talk about two ways to go. One is instructions about how to get over the hump, how to get the rock up over the top of the hill. That's one kind of instruction. But I don't think that's really the central focus of Buddhist teaching, actually, is how to get the rock up over the hill.

[07:27]

It is possible to do it. There are realms in which the rock is up over the top of the hill. The human realm, I think, is characterized by Sisyphus's effort. That's what we mostly know, is pushing the rock up the hill. There are other realms in Buddhism where you actually, there's a different relationship. There's the Dover realm. You know, there are six realms or six destinies in Buddhist cosmology. The Dover realm is the realm of the gods. And that's when the rock is up over the top of the hill and you're just coasting along. Things go so smoothly in the Dover realm. Everything works out just perfectly. In fact, the beings who inhabit the Deva realm, everything is going so smoothly that they don't bother even with having a body.

[08:37]

They don't even have bodies. Because it's too much trouble. Too many rocks, you know, if you have a body. So they just have sensory apparatus that... pulls in all of these wonderful sensations. That's the dover realm. Occasionally, we may visit the dover realm. And, you know, if we don't take it too literally. There's also the ashura realm, the realm of the fighting god, the fighting... the titans they're sometimes called. The Asura realm is where you have a very aggressive sense of just exactly how you're going to get that rock up over the top of the hill. And nothing's going to stop you. Nobody's going to stop you, no nothing, no morals, no... You're going to just get it up over there so that you can enter the Asura realm. This kind of mentality is very popular in our culture, you know.

[09:46]

fighting gods, fighting CEOs, so to speak. Not all CEOs, but... I was listening to the radio the other day, and there was some, I can't remember what it was, something like some business program, and they were advertising a book. I think the title of the book was something like, How to Demolish Your Competition. And... I don't want to demolish your competition. That's what you'd call an assurer. It was an assurer who was the author of that book, disguised as a human being. I don't demolish your competition. Get that rock up over the top. Use your competition's heads as stepping stones to get up over there. So anyway, now the thing is that that all buys into a certain perspective, a certain view as to what's important and what's not important.

[10:56]

Obviously what's important is getting the rock up over the hill. But I think actually what we find most refreshing, most deeply refreshing about Zen practice, about Buddhism, is that it doesn't buy into that viewpoint. There's a different viewpoint that's possible. And based on that different viewpoint, a different kind of intention arises. a different kind of intention or direction or idea arises as to what I'm doing with my life. So it just so happens I have another rock story involving Suzuki Roshi. And this was back in the late 60s when he spent a fair amount of time down at Tathahara.

[12:03]

And... This is a story about him and a young man named Dan Welch, a man, at that time he was a young man. He was maybe 26 or so, which now I think of as almost a kid, you know? 26, but at that time I was 22, and I thought of him as an ancestor, you know? Hello, viewer patriarch. He hasn't been around for quite a while, but at that time, for many, he's a real, what can I say, great practicer of the way, Dan. Anyway, at that time, he was maybe 26 or 28 or something like that, and down at Tassajara, he worked with Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki Roshi used to like to do rock work.

[13:04]

If you've been to Tassajara, you know there are many, many just fantastic, Phenomenally beautiful rocks at Tassara. So there's Dan, 26, let's say, working with Suzuki Roshi, who at that time was in his early 60s. After they're wet for a while, Dan is wiped out. He's completely exhausted. Suzuki Roshi is ready for more. Suzuki Roshi is ready to go. No hesitation. Let's keep working. After a while, Dan notices this and says to Suzuki Roshi, how is it that I'm 40 years younger than you, but I get tired and you don't? And Suzuki Roshi said, oh, well, I rest in the middle of the activity.

[14:12]

I rest in the middle of the activity. In the middle of action is a pause, is nothing. That's like when he used to give instruction about breathing to Exhaza and he used to say, exhale and then pause for just a moment at the end of the exhalation. And now I'll add, see what you find there. What do you find if you pause for a moment at the end of the exhalation? you find nothing. That's what's there. Nothing is there. A hint of nothing. And there's a literal way to understand rest in the midst of activity. But I think also he meant nothing in the midst of something.

[15:29]

This is a different perspective. This is a different point of view that Buddhism offers us. This is a much wider perspective, much more open point of view than what Sisyphus could manage. Maybe it wouldn't, oh, you see, I can't remember if I mentioned this, but in the Greek system, Sisyphus was actually in hell. Maybe I did say that. It's a kind of hell. But from Suzuki Roshi's point of view, pushing a rock up a hill is just, what can you say? It's just activity. It's not necessarily hell. And this is not a matter of near or far.

[16:35]

This is a matter of changing one's perspective to see what's actually going on. Opening up one's perspective, one's point of view, so that we're not caught in simply and only pushing a rock up a hill. We don't have to leave that area. We can still push a rock up a hill, but in the middle of the rock is no rock. In the middle of the hill is no hill. In the middle of pushing is nothing. That sounds very Zen, I bet. What the heck is he talking about, you know? I'll try to really get clear on what I'm talking about. It's not so esoteric, really. Now there's another friend who I also had lunch with. No, I just met with him a few weeks ago.

[17:37]

Another old timer, also, who used to be, actually, he was a teacher here at Zen Center. a couple of decades ago. He also hasn't been around for many a year. But he was told he was ordained by Suzuki Roshi. And he was telling me what he felt was Suzuki Roshi's main teachings. And I'll just digress for a moment and say this is a cautionary tale, you know, because He tried to get rid of boobism, you know? He got rid of his robes, he grew his hair, you know, he had a shaved head and he had robes and he was ordained and he was a teacher and all of this. He tried to get rid of all of this stuff, you know? He tried to get rid of Buddhism. He got rid of all of the stuff. But he told me, I couldn't get rid of Suzuki Roshi's teaching. I couldn't.

[18:37]

I couldn't. Once I got hooked, that was it, you know. I couldn't get the hook out of my mouth, you know. I couldn't get the teaching out of myself. So watch out. Watch what you get involved in. Even if you don't like it, you have to understand Buddhism. Once you understand it, or once you have a feeling for it, you can't really get rid of it so easily. Even if its consequences are not what you had anticipated, you know? Even if it isn't the donor realm that you had hoped it would be, you know? Anyway, the first thing that he said that he felt was Suzuki Roshi's most important teaching, or among his most important teachings, was no gaining mind.

[19:44]

No gaining mind. You could say the mind that does not seek to gain. The mind that does not seek to get something for yourself. no gaining mind. You could, a diagnosis of sisyphuses, boy, I'm going to get in trouble with that. What's that all do? Syllabins of Suzuki Roshi and sisyphus. A diagnosis of sisyphuses. of his problem is that he had a game in mind. He wanted a game on top of hell. He wanted that rock up over the top. That was the narrow perspective that he was stuck in, and that caused it to be hell. If he was introduced by Suzuki Roshi to the teaching of no gaining mind and got a feeling for it, got a sense of it, a scent of it, the aroma of it, then maybe it wouldn't be quite so oppressive, this effort that we make.

[21:11]

It wouldn't be quite so, you know, grinding, grind us up. Now we have to be careful because our inclination to understand things as rocks and hills in the way Sisyphus did is very pervasive and insidious. So guess what? We hear the teaching on no gaining mind and almost immediately we make no gaining mind into a big rock. Okay? And we're trying to push that rock up the hill, okay? Then we think, oh, this is a beautiful spiritual rock called no gaining mind. If I get this one up over the hill, then I can really...

[22:12]

I can really groove along, you know, and I'll be very spiritual and enlightened. But practice is not a prescription. You know, whoever the doctor is, whoever, you know, such and such, and he writes a prescription. There is not a prescription how to get the rock up over the top of the hill. Essentially it is not a prescription. There may in fact be prescriptive aspects of Buddhist practice. But it's not a prescription, it's a description. It's a description of the way things are. So the thing is not, oh, I have to do this and I have to do this.

[23:16]

This is my prescription. It's a matter of seeing how things are. And then from seeing how things are, then that's what's liberating. And from that liberation comes, you might say, liberated intention or liberated activity. Liberated means wide open, means having a wide perspective, not a crunched down, narrow view. So Randallion says, Dogen, for folks who may not be familiar with him, is a well-known Japanese Zen teacher. Actually, he's kind of the prologue Ancestor in the lineage that Suzuki Roshi, you know came from in Japan from the 13th century Really an extraordinary teacher Anyway, he says various things in one of these things that he wrote and then he says In Zazen you leap beyond the boundary of awakening

[24:25]

You leap beyond the boundary of awakening. Leap beyond the boundary of awakening means don't make it into a prescription. You don't make no gaining mind into one more rock to try to push up the hill. You could say that there is a prescriptive aspect and a non-prescriptive aspect in Buddhist teaching. But the prescriptive aspect is based on the non-prescriptive aspect. Rocks and hills are based on no rock, no hill.

[25:33]

Activity is based on no activity. The moral part of it is the foundation, is the original, is the fundamental aspect. So again, just to use Suzuki Roshi to try to help make this more clear, he said, one of the fun things that he said is, you're perfect just as you are. And you could use a little improvement. You ever hear that one? That's a great one. You're perfect just as you are, and you could use a little improvement too. There it is. That's non-prescription and prescription. You're perfect just as you are is the non-prescriptive element. That's the no-rock element.

[26:36]

And you can use a little improvement. That's the prescription. You can use a little improvement is based on you're perfect just as you are. Not in spite of you're perfect just as you are. It's based on that. It comes from that. So in the teaching of Ashva-Gosha in the Awakening of Firth in the Mahayana, The way that he talks about that is that each of us is endowed with original awakening. That's perfect, just as you are. Each of us is endowed with original awakening. And the path of practice is based on original awakening. It's not based on the fact that you're not awakened and you need to get something that you didn't have before. It's based on the fact that originally we already are awakened.

[27:39]

Already the dharma is transmitted. And it's a matter of coming around, coming back to that. We've lost our ray. So we have to come back to it. And also what I'm saying in terms of traditional teachings, for those of you familiar with them, in terms of the Prajnaparamita, what I'm trying to talk about is form is emptiness. Emptiness is form. There is no form, there is no rock and no hill that doesn't have no rock and no hill in it. And there's no way to get to perfection. There's no way to get to no rock and no hill, except through rocks and hills. The point is not to leave the realm of Sisyphus. The point is to understand it differently.

[28:42]

form and emptiness or in the teaching of the Sandokai. It's the merging of difference and unity. It's the merging of oneness with multiplicity. Multiplicity is the thousand things. It's all the rocks and all the hills in our life. And the simultaneous reality of that multiplicity is what's called oneness, unity, universality. In the Sandokan it says, these two things are like forward and backward steps. If you're walking, you can't distinguish, you know, forward and backward. They're both, they're part of the process, right? Forward and backward steps. This teaching that the critical aspect of practice is what is our point of view?

[30:29]

How do I understand what is happening? It was wrote there in the the Eightfold Noble Path. So that's one of Buddha's earliest teachings, is the Four Noble Truths, suffering, cause of suffering, end of suffering, and marga, the road to that end. And the road to that end, he enumerates eight different aspects of The first of those aspects is view, rote view, samyak trishti in Sanskrit. That's what I'm trying to talk about, is what is rote view? What is mahayana view? What is a wide view? And then from view comes the second aspect,

[31:35]

And then from intention, then comes action and speech and various other activities. But the very first thing is, what is your point of view? And what I'm propounding, what I'm trying to tell you is, is that Buddhist practice or Zen practice or Zazen or Zen mind, essentially it's a view stretcher. It stretches out the viewpoint that you have and it makes it very wide and kind of encompassing. So Brogan, another section of his writings, he says, when we go out in a boat to the middle of the ocean, where no land is in sight, and you view the four directions, you think that the ocean is circular and that it is nothing but circular.

[32:55]

But actually, the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. It is like a jewel. It is like a palace. All things are like this. When he says it's like a jewel and like a palace, what he's referring to is that when a fish swims in the ocean, the fish doesn't think, oh, this is a circular body of rudder, you know, between Asia and the United States and South America and so on. When a fish swims in the ocean, a fish thinks, this is a palace. Wow, what a place. Don't you think so? And when a dragon flies in the sky and a dragon looks down at the earth, the dragon thinks, oh, one of those beautiful blue jewels down there.

[34:12]

Or if you insist upon being more literal minded, we could say an astronaut, okay? They actually talk about that, right? They get up to the moon and they look back at the earth. New perspective, much wider, much more open perspective on the way things are. If you sit satsang, you know, you come to Zen Center, sit satsang, for 20 or 30 minutes, or see how long, one hour, or two hours, or one day, or two years, or 20 years, at some point the thought will probably occur to you, I am in pain.

[35:21]

Usually it doesn't take too long. I am in pain. The nice thing about zazen is that we're usually in pain. The nice thing about zazen is that it's so clear, it's so physical. My knees are killing me. My back hurts like nothing you've ever known before. But the point of zazen is that after a while, your view gets stretched, particularly the two parts, pain and I. Those are the parts that get stretched out. If you sit long enough and are open to it, don't close yourself down. You can lock yourself into, I am in pain. But if you sit long enough, you see that actually pain is not pain.

[36:26]

It's not exactly pain. It looks just like pain. It looks just like pain. And you can easily resume your understanding that it is only pain. It's very easy. It's a very easy understanding to have. But actually, after a while, you realize that you can't exactly say, this is just pain. if you actually just sit there with the sensation that we label pain. After a while, there is no pain. Well, pain and no pain, none pain. Certain things happen if you look at I, this I that is in pain. After a while, very hard to identify who the heck is this I, you know? I thought you knew. I thought I had a really clear idea about it. But maybe not.

[37:30]

A third example of view stretching is, some years ago I was talking with, I get most of my material from these other teachers and stuff. This was with Mel, who many of you know, I'm sure. Mel Weitzman is one of Zen Center's teachers. And I was having a hard time, and he said, well, how are you doing? And I said, well, not doing so good. I feel pretty shaky. Shaky meant, just to give you a sense, shaky meant I hadn't gotten the rock up over the hill, okay? Shaky meant I, what could you say? Self-doubt and I felt lousy, okay? That's another word for shaky. I felt badly about things, mostly about myself.

[38:37]

So then he said, oh, shaky Buddha. Oh, you're a shaky Buddha. He wasn't complimenting me. I mean, he wasn't saying, oh, you're this wonderful Buddha and so on. He was talking about the nature of reality. This is the non-escape clause of Buddhism. You can be shaky, but you have to be a shaky Buddha. You can be angry, but you have to be an angry Buddha. Don't forget Buddha. Don't forget emptiness in the midst of the activity. Don't forget resting in the midst of pushing the rock up the hill. This wide perspective is considered... You might say this wide perspective is considered the essence of practice.

[39:57]

And its effects are... big, to change this perspective, to change this perspective, is that what I said? To change this point of view, a very big effect. In another section of Dogen's words he says, and there's some technical language in this, but I think you may get a feel for it, he says, when even for a moment You express the Buddha's seal in the three actions. The whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha's seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. When even for a moment you express the Buddha's seal, express the Buddha's seal in the terms that I'm talking about today means when even for a moment you widen your perspective, you open your point of view, you take a very wide and broad perspective on your life.

[41:17]

You know the three actions are the actions of body, speech, and mind. It means in the midst of body, speech, and mind activity, you see rest. You see nothing. If even for a moment you can do that, then the whole phenomena really becomes wide. Becomes the Buddhist seal. and the entire sky turns into enlightenment. Pretty flashy, you know? Wow! Look up at the sky, it turns into enlightenment. I'll go on just a little bit with this, because he really gets carried away. Because of this, all Buddha Tathagatas have the original source. increase their dharma bliss and renew their magnificence in the awakening of the way. It's just for this one moment of having a wide perspective.

[42:27]

All due to target is renew their magnificence in the awakening of the way. Beautiful. So this change of perspective, this turn, it's very big. It makes a gap that's very wide. You can put all Buddha targeters into that gap by stretching your point of view. So in the Vimalakirti Sutra, you know, Vimalakirti is this low person who has an extremely wide point of view. And he's sick. And he's in this room that's just ten feet by ten feet. And the content of the Vimalakirti Sutra is, to a significant degree, a debate between Vimalakirti and Manjushri.

[43:36]

one of Buddha's foremost disciples. But because it seemed like it was going to be such hot stuff and people were so interested in it, 84,000 Bodhisattvas came to watch the debate and listen in. And they all fit into the room, which was only 10 by 10. And they were not tiny bodhisattvas either. They were third size. Third size bodhisattvas. Now each of them sat on a throne. And there was plenty of room. They didn't have to say, oh, there's plenty of room in there. Then later in the sutra, they go to another world system and they invite many, many bodhisattvas because they're having so much fun. They invite many, many bodhisattvas to join them, you know, in Vinayakirti's room and listen in on the rest of the date, you know. There's plenty of room. The weather's fine.

[44:38]

Jump in. That's how big it is. That's how wide angle this moment is. This moment of widening our perspective. So it's pretty good. Pretty good stuff. And usually by the end of a talk, frequently I'll be thinking, well, okay, now how do you do that? That sounds pretty good, but how do you do it? How do you get this wide angle? You may be wondering, how do you do it? How do you shift one's perspective? How do you stretch one's perspective on rocks and hills?

[45:42]

Up the hill is the other extreme. So my first suggestion is find, find the middle way. What is it that's in there? How do we approach it so that it doesn't immediately become pushing a rock up a hill? And don't let go of it. Don't just push it away. Don't say, oh, well, this is just pushing a rock up a hill, so to heck with it. I'll go, you know, have a cup of coffee and read the New York Times. To heck with that. There's nothing wrong with having a cup of coffee and reading the New York Times. But as a sense, don't give up on it. Seek, that's what we seek. That's called way-seeking mind, the mind that seeks the way, the mind that seeks the space between a rock and a hard place, that seeks the space between not doing anything and simply and only pushing a rock up a hill.

[46:52]

Now here's a hint about that, which I think is so, from my own experience, I believe it's so, which is that it's mostly a matter of taking away rather than adding on. What I mean is, this comes from some art thing that I once read, in which they make the distinction between painting where you make the object of art by putting on, that is, you put oil on canvas, or you, in other words, you add on, versus sculpture, which is the, you create the art by taking away, like you have a black or red or a chip away at it, and the form emerges. The form of your artistic expression emerges. So what I'm saying is that this is mostly, or at least initially or primarily, a matter of taking away our mistaken ideas rather than adding new ones on.

[48:05]

A well-known 17th century Zen master, Banke, a student asked him, said to him, I have been practicing assiduously for 20 years, but wild thoughts never cease arising. How do I extinguish these wild thoughts? And Banke said, To think of extinguishing a wild thought is a wild thought. Okay? And then recently someone mentioned to me, they said to me, 95% of the stuff that goes on in my head is junk. It was in the 90s. I don't remember if it was 95% or 99.9% or... And I said, oh, that's a wise thought.

[49:20]

That's a thought of wisdom. In other words, turning our awareness toward how we see everything as a rock and a hill is not a rock and a hill. That awareness is something that's not that, not those things. That moment of awareness is a moment of wild understanding. And my second suggestion, maybe it's the same as the first, I'm not sure, has to do with chicken matzo ball soup, which is... You know, when you smell chicken soup, when you smell it, especially if you like it a lot, you know that it is chicken soup.

[50:39]

You say... Yeah, chicken soup. There's chicken soup around here someplace. And then you can go and find it. And you can go and have some. So I don't know if we can say exactly how to get there. Because if we say exactly how to get there, it's a little bit too much like a rock and a hill. But it's a subtle thing, like an aroma, like chicken soup. So you can go around sniffing for it. And when you hit it, then you know, oh yeah, there it is. You can follow that scent. OK, thank you. They are in tension.

[51:39]

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