Zendo Lecture

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the potential
hi greg me
i think gum the only thing that could make this room a slightly more unpleasant were if it were filled with three thousand mosquitoes and a couple of bats so thank you for coming up bring up with our heat
oh my own
i don't know my boys
ha
so
why to read something up
out of the national geographic which i somebody brings and boy if that is so terrific to have this
you can learn tons of things but this particular one attempt to my room and i found that the at night i had to i had to turn it over what's that look like to you
spider big yes so i found it said evil that
no from the like a big spiders i couldn't stand it so i turned it over
so on
so this son this article here it comes with an illustration
it's too bad can't see it cause it sir
bizarre it some
it shows
it shows the space time continuum for those of you are interested in those things and it has all kinds of globs coming out of it and one of those gloves contains our universe and the other blogs are other universes and there's a
little something that got that describes it as they wanted to run routes says since entitled
origin infinite beginnings pushing the limits of theory and imagination in true einsteinian fashioned cosmologists are daring to speculate but ours is not the only universe
the big bang that created everything we know of of everything we know of space and time could be just one of an infinite number of beginnings yielding a never ending sequence of universes
the the scenario shown in this artist concepts the globs emerges from inflation theory a descendant of einstein's general theory of relativity relativity implies that space and time can stretch to vast dimensions from a tiny starting point inflation does
scribes how your own universe ballooned in the first moments and suggests that the same thing can happen anywhere at any time the result an eternal expanse of space erupting with bubbles of energy or big bangs egypt the seed of a universe
i know i love this stuff
but i wonder
i wonder if anybody else care about this kind of thing because we think about it
i was sitting outside today and
oh thank you
how much
and i'm no fool
this spot
and so i you know i look up in the sky and know we have waited what of our instruments of perception five senses right and we create a world from those five
and and that world we call the conventional world because we agree on it convention means that an agreement so that a tree is a three
a chair is a chair and if you look up in the sky you know what you see you see a in the daytime see a blue dome so this guy is a dome the sun is a desk and it goes from one side to the next but and when the sun is there the sky is blue and why as a blue because that's the name we give that color
that night is a little different than those sparkly things turn on because the sun isn't there were i guess we probably couldn't we can't see them because the sun is there and we call them stars and the other thing i noticed and i have actually i've noticed this before this is the earth is flat
and no matter what anybody says the earth is flat sure there are mountains in their valleys in their oceans but if you ever travelled overland splash
even flying know the sky is of course only three or four miles high but never when you're flying
if you fly over continents you fly over oceans fly over asia and it's flat
it's always flat is not the other thing it's flat and even and even that picture that was taken from outer space wherever that is shows a desk blue and white disc that they said as the earth and it's flat
and the only thing wrong with the picture is that it has an edge and i don't know about you but when i traveled i have never seen that edge where everything will drop off so there's something there's some sort of optical illusion
that happened went in taking that picture of the earth
the only thing i can't quite understand is how you can fly from san francisco go across united states logic ocean eurasia pacific ocean come back to san francisco
when a flat surface i don't quite get that but that but that i count up to i account to have you ever tried to find the square root of minus one honor
a calculator
you haven't
well cool what did you find
one
see nothing well what might have my calculator came up with was except when something equivalent to a smiley face
so when i try to think
of the
the universe is that they describe here it takes a leap
that the my imagination can't quite make and all that comes up it as my with is
in other words there's no need to go there
so the same thing the same kind of thinking we're perceiving goes for us as people
where
ah
ah were on
i am just as i am i am who i am and i'm nothing else i'm not you i myself and i am
i am not conditioned by everything else it's just my wife i'm not a part of anything else mean obviously if i jump up i'm not connected anything
and
see
i'm not just a collection of stories know
stories
poorly written by somebody else that i'm cursed to live it's actually my true life just as it is i'm not ruled by habits and addictions
sure i've always hated myself but for good reason
and then there's you
no you you are not me
but you're just like me you think like me you feel like me when we look at when we look at an object we're seeing the same thing i can read your mind because it's just like mine
and any difference between us
only shows your flaws
but somehow you've made a mistake and became not like me
and if you'd let me help you
you wouldn't have to be like you you could be like me
and if you don't think this is so just ask me
come on asked me
well no it isn't
ah it's not really true although i think come some of us me certainly before i came to zen center lived in that world and saw that world that very tight buried small prejudiced
frightened
the television world the world of i
self centered know and i know in in
in cosmology
there any place in the universe is center of the universe so
cause that's kind of bizarre isn't it
but any place any point when the universe is the center of the universe i love that stuff and somehow we know that but we think it's ourselves
that i am the center of the universe and it's true but if everything else is kind of lose its impact

the buddha
must have been amazing
because he knows this like like i'm when the go of astro physicists or well people like einstein
came up with that that view of the universe
and
hungary is it
buddha said down false imagination teaches us teach us that such things as light and shade long and short black and white are different and and are to be discriminated but they are not independent of each other they are only different aspects of the same thing they are terms of really
asian not have reality
relation that we heard that word before relativity
the amazing that he said he found this stuff out under a tree
welcome course that
well there's a story also have albert einstein his wife went to think mount wilson which was the largest telescope of the day to to watch how it works to so you could actually see the things that you thought about and he was running around actually been quite annoying and has his wife what did all this machine
scenery and said you know my husband my husband figures all this stuff out on the back of an old envelope
so
he's a hero of mine obviously
so
so obviously things things are not as they seem even though if we wish dearly that they were
so so what is it to us
if
what does it mean to us if things aren't the way they they appear because apparently all we do with his appearances
unless something else opens up inside of us
buddha says that done
that by becoming attached to names and forms
not realizing that they have no more basis than the activities of mind itself air rises and the way to liberation is blocked
so in a way if you're coming from the position that i just outlined where the earth is flat and so is everything else in that view liberation is blocked and were trapped in well we call it reverse which to me means and you want where you end up doing the same old thing
ings getting into the same old trouble saying the same old things thinking the same old things falling into the same old whole
that's a it's endless and it's circular but the buddha comes along and says known as a way out with a way out
he said in that way of course it is practice is a buddhist practice
course there are other ways to but the one we've all come here for is that is the buddha practice
there are moments when we actually do glimpse that this more than what we think then there's more and more than what appears to be i think if we didn't know that none of us would be here
every now and then for probably frequently if you're here that's happened enough so that you begin to see that the that will tiny world is included in the bigger world in the way things really are
and that that's called a whip being away so we always have enlightening experiences than not to not where i think a very frequent
how can so let me let me know
let me just go with what i have down here we live in a conventional world where tree as a tree i am i a chair as a chair you are you but we have glimpses that this is not the only world we live in those moments those flashes where we enter another world that knows
things come up together with everything else and are inextricably linked to one another they then vanish instantly in each moment only to arise again slightly different in the next moment and because their nature is change there is nothing truly solid or permanent about them
well this true seeing i think he brings us to practice and it's the practice of liberation and compassion they seem to go together oddly when you think liberation might need something else like gum parties
but strangely to true liberation needs to tenderness and kindness
so the the idea is that when we when we have a glimpse of true wisdom we see how things really are the things change the things have been continually change they are change that nothing is permanent
that nothing is solid or or separate from anything else everything rises up together continually continually like a phantom
and ah that when you finally see how things really are than what act what happens is that compassion arises
for example
if if we knew
how
the depth of each other's suffering
i think we would behave towards each other very very differently than we do
coming from that that the first example of how it is to be in the world very narrow where
everybody's just like me only flawed than i can when i see you i can easily put you in a box because i know who you are i know what you're thinking i know what you're feeling
but if i actually realized who you really were and saw the depth of your suffering and the end and the depth of your joy
then i'd be very careful or andrew
i would honored and the spectrum and i would not push you away or tried to kidnap you for myself
so each of us i think is here to wake up
and the the course of the thing about that as we may not like what we see when we wake up that's always a risk and i think trungpa rinpoche's said at the best when he said that and self awareness is one insult after the next
i thought i would always found that very comforting and very descriptive my experience
and and there are many ways to wake up and here we follow suzuki roshi way hopefully as best we can and of course he was following duggan's way the founder of the school and again was trying desperately to follow the boot
as way which happened nov fifteen hundred years earlier so we're all in this role in this trip together
but hopefully leads to a totally is awakened and liberated living because dogan a and guy made a very astounding discovery much much like this this one here with the blobs that practice itself
is deliberated life but while we're doing this stuff and it doesn't matter what you think or what you perceive in particular
but what's actually happening at a deeper level is that we are we living the life of liberation and compassion and joy
in the midst of great suffering
i'm like a tell the guests and many deaths here then that well i'll tell you a secret since it's only just ask us to guess some folks
this is not always a land of bliss here in pescara
this is a place where we come to get the wounds reopened to face are suffering through by letting it by letting it come up and so it found it certainly does lead to join and it also needs to the transformation of pain and suffering
and and sometimes we're glad of that
so what we do here as we sit zazen together as much as we can i'm having to deal with them resistance to getting up early
and resistance to coming into this room and that was little room
resistance which is mostly unconscious we don't really have a clue knowing that when you know where the time of comes after you saying well where were you this morning
we usually try to make something of that makes sense
i was tired i have repetitive stress injury and my ankle
and you got anything
anything to try to make sense out of something that is bigger and bigger than me bigger to you so so it's very difficult facing what's actually going on
we follow the same precepts
right living and we follow the same monastic standards and guidelines that than the community itself has worked out to enable us to show respect and care for each other
i'm not cause much damage
also but that's not the only place that happens there's also an our daily relationships with each other and teachers with each other practice leaders stage drivers the works were
where
we experience the emotional transformation that comes from working on our ancient twisted karma and it's transformation
so you know when all these nasty interchanges or even extremely pleasant interchanges it's always it's always around the practice
for the transformation of karma that drives us
kind of the drives us to be that that little that small narrow person
so
each of us is incredibly unique
and each one of us as defined or away
that's often often very difficult and very lonely but then we support each other here incredibly
it amazes me that amazes me
so to end to end this i wanted to
give you the words of einstein and then buddha einstein who was not particularly religious man
but he he was a man who could who saw the truth who has experienced the truth
and by looking for know that looking actually by the on delving in mathematics
which is rarely wrong
in fact mathematics proves things that we don't know yet
and often discover much later so i'm not that i know anything about mathematics of terrible at it but i appreciate something that that comes from a human genius so don't einstein said a human being experiences himself his thoughts his feelings that something separated from
the rest a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness this delusion is a kind of prison for us restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of understand
ing and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty
imagine imagine that
from a from a scientist
the buddha said than done
we should practice so that we can realize that deep happiness that is in each one of us and he said it was a true happiness true happiness that comes not from a limited concern for one's own welfare or that of those when feels close to but from the developing love and compassion for all
all beings
if we do no less than that i think we will have done enough
thank you very much